On Retranslation Of Gulliver’s Travels From The Perspective Of Ideology

Gulliver’s Travels is an outstanding satirical novel in travel style, which waswritten by a famous British writer Jonathan Swift. The author employs satire andfantasy plot, analyzing the18th century British social reality. It is welcomed byreaders all over the world, and it is also translated frequently in China. Since it wasfirstly translated into Chinese in1872, the number of different Chinese versions ofGulliver’s Travels is up to more than two hundred. There is no doubt to question thefeasibility and necessity of retranslation, but how does the translation leap from theoriginal political novel to today’s imaginative children’s book? Is this cross-cuttingtranslation purely caused by the publishers in pursuit of commercial interests?Traditional translation theories focus on the study of the internal text. However,due to the sharp change in the translation content and style, traditional translationtheories cannot explain the phenomenon of the retranslation of Gulliver’s Travels nomatter from the perspective of diachronic and synchronic. Andre Lefevere’smanipulation theory holds that translation is a kind of rewriting, manipulated bysocial ideology and the translator’s ideology. The theory develops a broader field fortranslation studies, so researches are not confined to the study of language level anylonger. Taking the political, social, cultural and other factors into consideration, itprovides a new theoretical framework for the translation process and translationevaluation.By classifying the different Chinese versions of Gulliver’s Travelsdiachronically and carrying out a contrastive study on three Chinese versions, it isconcluded that the retranslation of Gulliver’s Travels is manipulated by ideology. Inconclusion, different ideologies of translators, and dominant social ideology andliterary ideology of target culture influence the whole translation process to a largeextent, including the selection of translated text and translation strategies as well asthe dealing with languages in the translation. Due to different ideologies, it is ofgreat necessity to retranslate classical literary works.