A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Kite Runner From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

With the rise of the "cultural turn" in the 1970s, the translation study shifted from the linguistic perspective to the cultural perspective. Some western scholars were gradually aware of the importance of culture in translations and began to pay attention to the subjectivity of translators and some non-linguistic factors affecting translation activities, and they then put forward some new translation theories from new perspective, including the manipulation theory. The theory of manipulation proposed by Andre Lefevere argues that translation is influenced and manipulated by three elements: ideology, poetics and patronages. That influence is mainly manifested in the following way:during translations translators will have to make necessary rewriting of their translations to meet the requirements of the three elements. Ideology is not only the political ideology which we are familiar with, but also people’s systemic thoughts and outlooks of the world and society which they live in, including the philosophy, politics, art, religion, ethic and so on. Poetics refers to the literary forms people can accept in a certain society in certain times, whose components are the theme, content and presentation of the literary works. Patronage is an individual or group who has a great political and economic influence on a society in a certain period.Based on the manipulation theory, this thesis tries to prove that ideology, poetics and patronages affect and manipulate the translation process of the two Chinese translators of The Kile Runner to some degree through the comparison between the two Chinese versions by illustrations. Firstly, this thesis explains how the ideology exerts an influence on the two Chinese versions mainly from two aspects:political and social concept. Secondly, this paper demonstrates the poetics’ impacts on the choice of words and phrases, sentence structures and language style of the two Chinese versions. Lastly, the differences between the political parties, the requirements of the press and the censorship of Taiwan and mainland China affects two translators’ choice of translation strategies and forms, which shows us the influence of patronage on the translations.