Foreign Publicity Translation Under The Guidance Of Ideological Manipulation

With the deepening of the economic globalization, foreign publicity has become indispensable in the development of all walks of life. So there is no doubt that its importance has become increasingly obvious. With the aid of foreign publicity, China has undergone a steady development. There, however, emerge lots of problems in current foreign publicity translation. Those problems result from the fact that translators always pay their attention to the traditional translation criteria of "being loyal to the original texts" and of pursuing "the equivalence", with an over-emphasis on the transformation and analysis at the linguistic level. Less effort has been made to explore the distinct characteristics of the foreign publicity translation and the influences of cultural contexts. This can be reflected in such aspects as their choices of the source text, different interpretations of the same text, various translation strategies and specific translation techniques to be adopted and the reception or rejection of the translated version by its target readers. Currently, a relatively poor quality of foreign publication translation can not meet the requirements of overall strategic development of foreign publicity in China. Based on above-mentioned facts, this thesis makes an attempt to discuss the foreign publicity translation from the perspective of ideology. Ideology is introduced to the translation circle by Lefevere, an outstanding figure of the Manipulation School. He puts forward the idea that "Translation is rewriting" and "Rewriting is manipulation", and holds that translation can not be carried out in vacuum, and is a product of history, society and culture. As a result of its own unique characteristics and specific purposes, foreign publicity translation, as a special text, related to culture and politics, is bound to be under the manipulation of ideology. First of all, this thesis analyzes the text types of foreign publicity and its characteristics. Besides, it makes an overview of current studies on foreign publicity translation, and makes an introduction of its problems, purposes and principles. Then, based on the Manipulation Theory of Lefevere, the thesis adopts the qualitative research method and case study and attempts to analyze the ideological manipulation in the whole process of foreign publicity translation, which can be proved in the translators’choices of source texts, their different interpretations of source texts, various translation strategies and specific translation techniques to be adopted and the reception or rejection of the translated version by its target readers. The basic translation strategies of foreign publication are finally suggested, that is, moderate domestication and moderate foreignization, as well as different specific translation techniques can be adopted according to different text types, including deletion, addition, literal translation and substitution. Therefore, studying the foreign publicity translation from the perspective of ideology is helpful in revealing the very nature of foreign publicity translation and in improving the quality of foreign publicity.Meanwhile, the manipulation of ideology in foreign publicity translation is relative. An over-emphasis on ideological manipulation and a failure of making an ontological study on it would be counter-productive. Though ideology is an important element in foreign publicity translation, translators should have a clear awareness of it and make proper choices in the process of foreign publicity translation. Lastly, there are also some limitations in this thesis, which still deserves much attention and efforts by future researchers.