A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of My Country And My People Under The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Lin Yutang is a renowned writer, translator and scholar both at home and abroad. He holds “Two feet step on Chinese and western culture, One heart comments on universe article” as his mission. He has made brilliant achievements in many fields, including literature, history, linguistics and cultural exchanges between east and west. In addition, he has made outstanding contributions to the development of human culture and left precious spiritual heritage to Chinese civilization. My country and My People is his first English book causing great repercussions in America. Also it is his representative masterpiece that brings him reputation in western literary world. He slowly relates us Chinese morals, mental state and expectations, as well as Chinese society, literature and art, temperament and interest of life with candid and humorous style and wise and fluent language. It is an excellent book rarely got for people to study national culture and spiritual content. Once published, it has caused quite a stir in western world and has been translated into many languages. Pearl S. Buck wrote the preface for the book, evaluating it as the most real, the most thorough, the most complete and the most important book about china.Up till now,there are two versions that are most popularized and sold in the market.One is Huang Jiade’s version(《吾国与吾民》)which was first published in 1936 and reprinted by Shanxi Normal University Press in 2006.The other(《中国人》)is translated by Hao Zhidong and Shen Yihong in 1988 and reprinted by Xue Lin press in 2007.Although these two versions met the expectations of target readers at different degrees,there are still differences between them due to different factors,like social culture,ideology,and poetics and so on.Therefore different translators of the two versions adopt different translation strategies.In terms of this,the author of this thesis takes manipulation theory as theoretical perspective,and makes a comparative study between Huang’s version and Hao&Shen’s version both at linguistics and cultural level in order to enrich the research on Lin Yutang and his works.The western translation theory research actually shifted from the text to some relevant studies on cultural, social, historical and political factors which are outside the text itself in the 1970 s and 1980 s. Among these researches, Andre Lefevere, the representative of translation culture research school, his manipulation theory is the most complete and systematic one. The elaborate description of Lefevere’s manipulation theory was embodied in his book Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of literary Fame. In the book Lefevere pointed out that under different historical conditions, translators’ translation behavior was restricted by three factors: ideology, poetics and patronage. The author of this thesis will take ideology, poetics and patronage as a cutting point to firstly compare the differences of the two versions from both macro and micro aspects; The author will compare two translators’ different translation strategies in macro aspect, also the two Chinese versions will be carefully compared and analyzed at linguistic and cultural level; Then the author intends to analyze the reasons of these differences from ideology, poetics and patronage. Eventually, the author comes to the following conclusions. Firstly, there are exactly obvious differences between the two versions. Secondly, it is the different ideology, poetics and patronage at different time that lead to these differences. Thirdly, because of these differences, the two translators adopt different translation strategies, that is Huang mainly adopts domestication while Hao and Shen foreignization. There is mainly free translation including addition and omission in Huang’s version, while literal translation in Hao and Shen’s version. Besides, there are many footnotes in it, through which western culture is transmitted. The aim of the research is not to judge which version is good and which one is bad, but tries to expound why different translators will adopt different translation strategies in different time.