A Study Of Ying Ruocheng’s Translation Of Gou’er Ye Nie Pan From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

With the emergence of "cultural turn" in the 1970s, translation studies have broken through the barrier of linguistics and paid more attention to the extra linguistic factors. As one of the most prominent representatives of the Cultural School of translation studies, Lefevere puts forward rewriting theory, which conducts a systematic study of translation activities from ideology, poetics and patronage, putting translation into social system. As a descriptive theory and a milestone of translation studies, it provides a new perspective for translation studies.As a special literary form, drama possesses a nature of duality, namely the literariness and performability. It has to cater to the readers as well as audience, so the difficulty of drama translation can be imagined. The translation of is a success. In translation, Ying Ruocheng maintains the linguistic and cultural characteristics of the original text and takes the cultural needs of target audience into account. Till now, scholars mainly focus on studying Ying’s translation thoughts and other translations, while the study on translation of Gou’er Ye Nie Pan, which is translated as Uncle Doggie s Nirvana, is rare.Based on rewriting theory, this paper analyzes Ying Ruocheng’s translation of Gou’er Ye Nie Pan from the perspective of ideology, poetics and patronage and finds there is obvious rewriting in this version, revealing the significance of these three factors on the selection of original texts, use of translation strategies and ways of wording and phrasing. The ideological aspect including personal ideology, political ideology and social & cultural ideology mainly affects the choice of source text and layout. The influence of poetics is primarily reflected in the ways of translating culture-loaded words and idioms. And the influence of patronage is exerted by Beijing People’s Art Theatre and China Translation & Publishing Corporation. Through analysis and research, this paper further reveals the practicability and guiding function of rewriting theory. Meanwhile, it is hoped to draw academic attention to the study of drama translation.