On Zhao Luorui’s Two Translation Versions Of The Waste Land:from The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

The Waste Land with 434 lines in total is one of the most influential works of Eliot which involves British, Germany, Greek, Latin and other 7 languages and more than one hundred quotations of religious allusions, myths and legends as well as a variety of classic works. The Waste Land, honored as a "milestone of modernist poetry," breaks the conventional rules of traditional poetry, be it the form or content of expression. Ever since the official publication in 1922, The Waste Land has not only caused a huge stir in academia of the western countries, but also won itself the reputation among poets, critics as well as readers in China. However, it was not until in the 1937 that the first Chinese version of The Waste Land was published which opened the prelude of translating Eliot’s poetry. Up to now, in China including Taiwan Chinese versions of The Waste Land have piled to ten. As the first translator of The Waste Land, Zhao Luorui as well as her translation should by no means be ignored. Yet due to many reasons for almost a half century that translating Eliot and other modernist literature has come to a pause. After entering the new period, Zhao Luorui once again took the lead of the other wave of translating modernist literature by auto-revising her previous translation version of The Waste Land and had it published on the Foreign Literature. All in all, we could say the contribution Zhao Luorui made on introducing Eliot and his poetry should not be overlooked.Current discussions on the translation of The Waste Land are generally focusing on comparing advantages and disadvantages of each translation version, the accuracy of a specific translation, the accepting context of a particular translation, and so on and so forth. Yet articles around Zhao Luorui’s translation of The Waste Land are not too many, let alone some of which quoted examples form the version 1980 while talking about the version 1937, hardly realizing the huge differences such as replacement, addition and alterations of word order between those two versions.With the application of Andre Lefevere’s rewriting theory, this thesis took Zhao Luorui’s two versions of translating The Waste Land as an example. We generalized and summarized the manipulating factors on Zhao Luorui’s Chinese version in the 1930 s, under whose influence we explored the translating strategies and methods adopted by Zhao Luorui as well as the acceptance and influence of the translation accordingly. In addition, by comparing Zhao Luorui’s early translation and her latter revised translation in the 1980 s. we explored the different manipulating factors of different timse reflected by the differences of the two versions in the hope of providing the readers a different perspective of appreciating the Chinese version of The Waste Land, especially the Zhao Luorui’s.