An Analysis Of English And German Versions Of Lust,Caution From Lefevere’s Four Aspects Of Translation

As an influential supporter of cultural studies, Andre Lefevere develops his work in translation studies out of his strong links with polysystem theory and the Manipulation School. He focuses particularly on the examination of very concrete factors, such as power, ideology, institution and manipulation. Lefevere examines translation from four aspects: ideology, poetics, universe of discourse and language.Written by Aileen Chang, the novel Lust, Caution is a story of love and betrayal during the time of anti-Japanese war. A young and beautiful female student planned, along with a patriotic student group, to assassinate a high level official in the Japanese puppet government by seducing him. She almost succeeded, until she realized that she had fallen in love with her target. She warned him to escape at the last second, resulting in the execution of her entire group.In this paper, the author will use Levefere’s theory to analyze the English version by Julia Lovell and the German version by Susanne Hornfeck of Lust, Caution. The author will analyze them from the above-mentioned four aspects of translation, including ideology, inventory components, functional components, customs, objects, etc. The author finds that Julia Lovell prefers acceptability of the translation while Susanne Hornfeck prefers adequacy. Differences on the above-mentioned four aspects will be explained from the perspective of cultural studies.