On The Influence Of Ideology On Rong Rude’s Translation Of Animal Farm

Animal Farm, published in1945, is an allegorical and anti-totalitraianism novel written by English writer George Orwell. It has been considered to be a political novel reflecting the society of Soviet Union by many readers. Because of its sensitive theme, Animal Farm didn’t come into the front stage in China when it had been published for nearly half a century, which was even included into banned books. With the development of reform and opening up, the political environment of China was relatively loose at the end of the20th century when Chinese scholars and translators showed more concern on it. The number of the Chinese translation versions goes up to36versions until now, which was only9in20th century. Among the Chinese translations, Rong Rude’s version is widely distributed and well accepted. His translation is terse, fluent and elegant, which is known as one of the Chinese translation classics.Based on Andre Lefebvre’s manipulation theory, this thesis is devoted to explore the influences of ideology on Rong Rude’s Chinese translation of Animal Farm. Translators always do translation in a particular culture of a certain period. Translations are inevitable to be influenced by a certain social culture. Therefore, to large extent, the social ideology in a certain period manipulates translator’s translation and influences the choice of source text and the adoption of translation strategy. In the thesis, it illustrates the social ideology at the end of20th century and the beginning of21st century that Rong experienced. With the world globalization, China’s economy developed and cultural communication improved. People started to pursue more on spiritual life. Hence, the social ideology in this period is the necessary condition on Rong’s choice of Animal Farm. Meanwhile, under the influence of social ideology, Rong adopts the domestication as well as foreignization strategy. Furthermore, translations present their own characteristics which are also influenced by translators’different individual ideologies. Tough translator’s individual ideology is normally consistent with the social ideology, it varies because of different life experience, educational background, cultural preference, etc. The thesis analyzes Rong’s individual ideology from the aspects we mentioned above and presents that his individual ideology is the sufficient condition on his choice of the source text. Under the influence of individual ideology, his translation displays the features like explicit and refined language, idiomatic usage, footnote making.By doing this research, firstly, it can help the author and readers better understand Rong’s translation version of Animal Farm. Secondly, it will remind the researchers to take full consideration of the important factor--ideology.