A Comparative Study On The Three Chinese Versions Of The Pickwick Papers From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

The Pickwick Papers, a classic work of Charles Dickens, describes British urban and rural social life, customs and anecdotes in the19th century, and gives a profound reveal and merciless ridicule on the parliament, elections, lawyers, judges, courts and prisons in a comedy way, paving the way for the British critical realism. It is not only considered as one of the greatest novels ever in the British, but also as one of the classics of the world literature, which has been translated into many languages. Since it was first introduced to China early in the20th century, there have been many Chinese versions including the full versions, abridged versions, children’s versions, English-Chinese versions and comic versions, having a far-reaching influence on the Chinese society.The rewriting theory proposed by Lefevere is one of the most important translation theories of the cultural school. It emphasizes that translation is a rewriting of the original text. All rewritings, whatever their intentions are, reflect a certain ideology and poetics manipulating of the literature so as to serve a particular society. Rewriting theory proposes three factors limiting translators’manipulation on translation:ideology, poetics and patronage. As one of the most important factors, ideology produces a great impact on the selection of the subjects, choice of translation methods, and translator’s treatment of details. Poetics, a collection of social standards of literature, plays a vital role in the use of language in translation. And patronage has a significant role in the publication and issuance under the influence of ideology. With Andrea Lefebvre’s rewriting theory as the theoretical framework, this paper puts the translation activities of The Pickwick Papers under the macro background of social culture, and takes three representative Chinese translation versions of The Pickwick Papers as the research objects among many versions, namely Lv Xing Xiao Shi by Chang Jue and Xiao Die in1925, Pi Ke Wei Ke Wai Zhuan by Jiang Tianzuo in1947and Pi Ke Wei Ke Wai Zhuan by Liu Kaifang in2002. With the application of the comparative analysis and case study method, this paper gives a brief account of the three Chinese versions first, and then adopts the ideology and poetics as the research perspectives (since the lack of historical data about the patronage of the three Chinese versions of The Pickwick Papers, this factor of patronage will not be discussed in this paper), discusses the differences of the dominant of ideologies and poetics in the translators’periods, and further analyzes their influence on translators’selection of the source text and translation strategies respectively, and then continues to compare and analyze the differences among the three versions from the aspects of language orientations, rewriting of titles and illustrations, the use of omission and adaption translation method and the translation of culture-loaded words. From the above analysis, a conclusion can be drawn:ideology and poetics influence and manipulate translators’ selection of translated texts, choice of translation strategies and degree of rewriting and rewriting modes. In other words, the two factors, namely ideology and poetics play a great role in producing different versions for the same source text by various translators in different periods.