Rewriting And Cultural Identity:a Study Of The Book And The Sword

Based on Andre Lefevere’s rewriting theory, this thesis compares the original book Shujian Enchou Lu with Graham Earnshaw’s translation The Book and The Sword, aiming to explore how Earnshaw translates the novel, how ideology and poetics influence the translator, and cultural identity of the translation in the target language system.By analyzing the original book and its English version, the major findings are:(1) Considerable rewritings are found in the English version, mainly in the following aspects:titles of the chapters, experiences of some characters, fighting scenes, cultural background (religion, poetry, etc.), language style, image of characters, nicknames, etc.(2) Earnshaw mainly adopts techniques like omission, simplification, compiling, paraphrase which make the translation seemingly not very faithful to the original book.(3) Ideology and poetics are the two main factors influencing the translation.(4) Undoubtedly, to win readers’cultural identity is the main purpose of the translation. Earnshaw makes great efforts to make his translation easy to understand and better to entertain. The original book has, actually, been rewritten into an Target-oriented version.Because of the unfinalizability and uncertainty of the meaning of the text, absolute equivalence is impossible. Translation is not a copy of the original text but a new interpretation of the original text in another culture. Rewriting is, actually, inevitable and effective in winning readers’cultural identity.