Causal Analysis Of Lin Shu’s Translations Being Praised First And Depreciated Later: A Perspective Of Bourdieu’s Sociology

Lin Shu, as a renowned translator of western works with little knowledge of foreignlanguage, has during his whole life translated as many as246literary works, which become amajor spectacle in Chinese and even the world’s literary translation history. Shortly after thepublication of his early translations starts an upsurge for novel translations in China and histranslations become the earliest western classics in Chinese literary history. But from the lateQing Dynasty to the May Fourth period, we see a dramatic shift of these classics from firstbeing praised and worshiped to bitterly criticized and depreciated. Collapse of the QingDynasty and the start of the Republic of China is a landmark in the development of Lin Shu’sideology. After the1911Revolution, Lin Shu’s translations decrease gradually in quality andalso criticism of his translation is mostly after the revolution. So divided by the1911Revolution, Lin Shu’s early translations are widely praised and well accepted, which is called“first being praised”, while his later translations are bitterly criticized and depreciated,especially during the May Fourth literary Revolution, which is known as “later beingdepreciated”.Recently with the vigorous development in translation studies, Lin Shu once againbecame the focus of research for his controversial role in the history of Chinese translationstudies. Lin Shu’s translations fist being praised and later depreciated is definitely not asimple translation phenomenon, but actually a complicated cultural event behind which rootdeep and complex historical and cultural causes. In the framework of Bourdieu’s sociologyand based on the three analytical procedures put forward by Bourdieu,“habitus”,“agent” and“field” are introduced in this thesis to explore the causes behind, combining the internal andexternal, the social and individual aspects of translation studies together to analyze thedramatic contrast between the early and later part of Lin Shu’s translations and furtherhighlight the social nature of Lin Shu’s translating activity.The author finds, the1911Revolution overthrew the two-thousand-year-old feudalmonarchy and at the same time challenged the feudal ideology and literature represented bythe Confucianism and classical language. The change of literary field is a result of theevolution in the political field. The new literary field then advocated a wholesalewesternization and the construction of new literature in the criticism of the old Chineseliterature. These new writers hoped to realize the modernization of literary concepts andliterary translation norms through the translating of foreign works and the promoting of newliterature. Therefore, under the collusion of the political field and the literary field, the newtranslation field gradually formed. Earlier with quite many favorable conditions like excellent interpreting partners, successful publicizing and marketing by the reputed and powerfulCommercial Press and perfect targeting of readers, Lin Shu’s translations quickly occupiedthe central position in literary the translation market and also established Lin Shu’s position asa master unrivaled in the translating field of late Qing Dynasty. Totally the opposite of all thefavorable conditions early in the field before the1911Revolution, there was a restructuringand reshaping of the relationship of these agents in the field after1911. The loss of excellentinterpreter, the strategy adjusting in the marketing by the Commercial Press and the change ofnew readership all had a profound influence on his later translating career. Also, Lin Shu’stranslator habitus got involved in the constructing of translation norms in the early translationfield of late Qing Dynasty, and stipulated the characteristics, codes and standards of thetranslation field, which became the norms and standard of the translation field at that time.While after the1911Revolution, a new generation of translators broke gradually thetranslation rules and norms of the original translation field for a complete overthrow of theoriginal translating authority, which radically changed the characteristics and structure of thewhole translation field, and created a new translation field. Traditional culture was verystrongly entrenched in Lin Shu, and influenced and guided by this habit structure, Lin Shu’scultural and literary ideas were renewed and innovated in the1898Reform Movement, butwere far from a thorough modernized transformation, which was shown in his incapacity ofbreaking through his own limits and of keeping up with the time. So Lin Shu’s translatorhabitus was incompatible with the new field composed of the political, literary, and translationfields and was eventually abandoned by both the time and the field.