A Study Of Gladys Yang’s The Border Town In Light Of Field-habitus Theory

The thesis is a case study of Gladys Yang’s English version of Bian Cheng in 1962 by employing the key concepts of Bourdieu’s sociological-field and habitus theory as the theory framework. It delimits the field as the translation of Chinese modern and contemporary novels, and the translator’s habitus as Gladys Yang’s translation thought, selection of source texts and translation strategy. The author describes the translator’s translation thought, selection of source texts and translation strategy by examining her life trajectory through the research methods of qualitative study and case study. It places the translator in the field of the translation of Chinese modern and contemporary novels and describes the main agents’influence on the formation of the habitus, and the main agents refer to the sponsor and the reader in the field.From the above analysis, the major findings have been gained:Firstly, Gladys Yang’s translation habitus is investigated. As for her life trajectory part, her special family background, mixed marriage with Yang Xianyi and academic career nurtured her preference for Chinese modern and contemporary literature. The translator’s translation thoughts are manifested by the principles of being faithful to the source text and the reader’s acceptance. On the translation strategy aspect, Gladys Yang tends to adopt the strategy of foreignization as the dominant strategy with domestication as a complementary strategy. Secondly, the field’s influence on Gladys Yang’s translation habitus has been discussed. The dominating power in the translation of Chinese modern and contemporary novels was the Chinese government from the period of 1960 to 1978, under this field’s influence, Gladys Yang chose to translate the famous writer Shen Congwen’s masterpiece Bian Cheng. Meanwhile, the main agents in the filed were the sponsor and the reader and they have some influence on the translator’s translation thoughts, selection of source texts and translation strategies.The study proves the suitability of habitus-field theory by conducting the case study of Bian Cheng’s English version of Gladys Yang. The formation of a translator’s habitus has been found to be closely related to the given field, the dominant power in the field influence the translator’s habitus, and the main agents in the field influence the formation of the translator’s habitus. Besides, the thesis describes Gladys Yang’s translation activities and choice of source-texts from the macroscopic perspective, and it can be counted as a literature on studies of Gladys Yang. However, due to the limitation of the space and time, it lacks a systematic and diachronic study of Gladys Yang’s translation features. Besides, the theory’s suitability still needs more verification from the studies on other translators.