A Study On Two Chinese Versions Of My Country And My People From The Perspective Of Lefevere’s Manipulation Theory

My Country and My People is one of the masterpieces written by our famous Chinese scholar Lin Yutang. From the social-cultural angle under the framework of manipulation put forward by Andre Lefevere, the writer of this thesis compares the two Chinese versions of My Country and My People:Huang Jiade’s version in the1930s and Hao Zhidong and Shen Yihong’s version in the1980s. The purpose of comparison is to reveal how the three factors of ideology, poetics, and patron in different socio-cultural contexts affect the translation practice of translators, and influence their behavior.As one of the main representatives in translation studies, Lefevere points out that translation activities should be contained and studied in cultural system. He discusses the influence of ideology, poetics and patronage on the choice of translated texts and translation strategies and proposes the claim that translation is rewriting. Different translators in different times, different cultural environments and historical backgrounds will have different ideological tendencies, and be restricted by different domain poetics and patronage. The translators under the manipulation of ideology, poetics and patronage try to make the translations be accepted as much as possible by the target language readers.Under the guidance of manipulation theory, and by comparing two Chinese versions, the thesis intends to prove that different historical backgrounds, ideology, patronage and poetics will affect translator behavior and translation strategies, which will furthermore affect the translations. As a result, the translators in different times have a great difference on expression. The thesis will compare and analyze the two versions from their languages, styles and cultures. The thesis falls into five chapters.Chapter One introduces aim of this study, research methodology, significance of this study and structural arrangement.Chapter Two discusses the origin of manipulation and makes a brief introduction to ideology, poetics and patronage.Chapter Three gives a brief introduction to Lin Yutang, his novel of My Country and My People, and the two translators with their respective Chinese versions.Chapter Four makes a study on comparison of the two versions, including dictions, styles, and sentence structures from the view of ideology, dominant poetics, patronage. And then to assess the quality of two versions in order to get the conclusion that Huang’s translation gets much closer to Lin Yutang’s writing feature.Chapter Five is the conclusion of the whole thesis.Through the comparison of the two versions, it can be revealed that the translator is absolutely influenced by various factors of manipulation, which is embodied in the transition, and through the analysis of translation, the trace and the tendency of translator behavior can be seen. If we want to make a mutual verification between the text and translator behavior, there is a need to combine the text factors and translator’s factors, and combine internal factors and external factors. Thus, it is possible to understand the translation activities comprehensively and objectively.