On The Two English Versions Of Mao Zedong Poems From The Perspective Of Lefevere’s Rewriting Theory

This thesis is a comparative study on two English versions of Mao Zedong poems—Mao Tse-tung Poems (referred to as the official version) and XuYuanchong’s Selected Poems of Mao Zedong (Chinese-English)(referred to as Xu’s version) based on the rewriting theory. This thesis applies the theory to specific examples by analyzing the influence of ideology, poetics and sponsor on the translation activities.Lefevere’s rewriting theory provides a new perspective for translation study, enriches the content of translation theory, and broadens the scope of translation study. Translation study is far beyond linguistic level, the political, historical, cultural and social factors should also be taken into consideration.This thesis discovers that there exist deep reasons that the two versions of different periods present different characteristics. Influenced by ideology, poetics and patronage, the official version aims to accurately convey the meaning of the original poems without adding translator’s personal understanding to the translation; Xu’s version exhibits some obvious characteristics of rewriting in order to maintain the three beauties—beauty in sense, sound and form of Mao Zedong poems. Both versions have their merits. By comparing them, the paper aims to explore effective ways of translating Mao Zedong poems, and provide reference for future translation practice.