Translation And Reception Of Works Of Country Leaders In The Perspective Of Ideological Manipulation

As an important carrier of thought, the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung(hereinafter as SWM) and the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (hereinafter as SWD)are two major works of country leaders of equal significance. Translation of the twocollections took place in different historical periods and thus displays different featuresduring their translation activities. Under the manipulation of different politicalideologies, what translation motives do they serve respectively? Who were thetranslators and how did they master the translation strategies? How have the twocollections been received in foreign countries? The present study attempts to solve theabove question by examining the translation and reception of these two works, whichhopefully can provide guidance to future practice of leader works translation.In light of the Manipulation Theory and the research method of descriptivetranslation studies, this thesis introduces the publication of SWM and SWD and theirEnglish versions and probes into how ideology has affected the translation of the twocollections by analyzing how social contexts are shown in the translation motives,translators and translation strategies respectively. This thesis also takes one step furtherto study the spreading and acceptance of these two works in order to see to what extentideology has helped or hindered the process, together with an attempt to find out whothe readers are and what their expectations for this kind of works are, so as to providesound advice about how future translation of works of country leaders should work tomeet the requirements of the Chinese society nowadays.The significance of this thesis is, first, to conduct a comparative study of SWM andSWD under ideological manipulation in order to examine translation activities of worksof country leaders from a historical point of view; second, to assess the translationresults by examining the whole process of translation and acceptance of the translatedcollections and accordingly provide solid advices for future translation practice ofworks of country leaders by learning from the past.