A Study Of The Manipulation Of Chinese Poetics On The Chinese Translation Of The Bible From The Perspective Of Language Form And Style

Since 1970s, the focus of Western translation studies shifted from the question "how to translate" which is always the central problem of linguists to questions like "why the work is translated in this way?" and "why the literary works of this country is translated instead of others?" and so on. That is to say, the translation studies has focused on other factors that can restrict the translating beyond language. This kind of shifts is called "cultural turn" of translation studies. Andre Lefevere is one of the representatives who study translation from the perspective of culture. He regards translation as a rewriting of the original and describes the literary system in which translation functions as being controlled by three main factors, which are:(1) professionals within the literary system; (2) patronage outside the literary system and (3) the dominant poetics. His theories have become the basic foundation of the translation studies in terms of culture. This thesis intends to prove that the Chinese translation of the Bible has been manipulated by the dominant poetics in China through the comparison of different versions and the analysis of the history of the Chinese translation of the Bible.As we all know, the mixture of theology, literature and history in Bible contributes to its enduring translation all over the world.Nowadays,the versions and number of languages of translated Bibles ranks the top in the whole world which have exerted great impact into different cultures. Among different languages of Bible, the Chinese version have occupied important position because of profound Chinese culture and history,which the Chinese poetics belongs to. Generally, the Western and Chinese translation theory defined the poetics as one including literature devices and and literature concept. The former referrs to kinds of methods and relevant factors that helps to show the text while the latter is related to the spirits which can determine the location of the text in the whole literature system. As the two parts is involved in a wide range, the thesis intends to analyze from two vivid aspects of language form and the writing style under the overall understanding framework of Chinese poetics. That is to say, the Chinese poetics in the thesis have been simplified into two categories:the form and the content. Moreover, the thesis chose the change of Biblical language form and the expression of the theme of Biblical poems as the study points in order to obtain a convincing conclusion.Since the Chinese version of Bible has been published, its language has evolved from classical literary Chinese to Mandarin and then to modern Chinese, which is the same as the developing trace of the whole language system. Therefore, the thesis classified the study into three phases and select one part of one translated version in each phase in order to prove the influences the Chinese poetic tradition have on the Chinese translation of Bible on the aspect of form. While on the aspect of content, the thesis focused on the poem of bible and unfold the study from the aspect of lyric poem and narrative poem which are the main category in the style of poem. Through analyzing how Chinese translators dealt with the same theme and feeling expressed in different language, the thesis aims to find out the consistency between Chinese poetic tradition and the final version. In summary, though the motif of the thesis seems to be broad, the actual discussion is vivid. As an old saying goes:"seeing one horse and you’ve seen them all", the thesis only hopes to be helpful with author’s judgment.