A Study Of The Ideological Manipulation On The Different Translation Situations Of Robinson Crusoe And Moll Flanders In China

Since the cultural turn of the translation studies, it has been gradually realized that translation is not an simple transfer of language, but a cross-cultural activity. In the whole process of translation, the culture and politics in the targeted society have a manipulative effect on translators in different aspects. The connotations of ideology are involved with different aspects of the society and culture. Susan Bassnet and Andre Levefere introduced ideology into the field of the translation studies, and from then on, the study on the relation between ideology and translation has become the hot spot of the translation studies.Both Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe are written by Daniel Defoe. The latter is well known by Chinese people and enjoys a high reputation in China, while the former is known by only a few people. Through investigation, the author finds that Moll Flanders is highly spoken of by many scholars in China and other countries. They think this book is even more excellent than the other one in the aspects of art and spirit. However, their translation situations in China are quite different from each other and Robinson Crusoe is translated more often than the other one. The author thinks that the difference has a close relation with certain ideologies in Chinese society. According to the respective features of these two works, the author tries to explore the reasons under the social and cultural context. Based on the specific historical stages of China, the author divides the translation history of the two works into three periods, and explores the ideologies that influence the translation of the two books respectively. These ideologies mainly include personal ideology, patronage ideology, national ideology and aesthetic ideology. Meanwhile, these ideologies do not exert the influence in an independent way, and under certain circumstance, certain specific ideology may play a dominant role.The dissertation attempts to explore the effects made by the specific ideologies on the selection of source texts, and to explain why some works can easily enter targeted cultural system, while others are rejected though they may be excellent works. Ideology is just like an invisible hand, which influences the choices on translation materials. Meanwhile, this dissertation points out that translators and other relevant people should take a full consideration of the literary works’ value, and try to reduce the manipulation made by ideology on the selection of source texts before translation, so as to guarantee that some excellent works would not be disdained and neglected.