A Study On Lin Yutang’’s Ranslation Strategies In Famous Chinese Short Stories From The Perspective Of The Manipulation Theory

This thesis makes a tentative study of how ideology and poetics influence Lin’s translation strategies in his Famous Chinese Short Stories within the framework of Lefevere’s manipulation theory. Famous Chinese Short Stories is translated into English by Lin Yutang in 1952. In the translation process, Lin makes drastic alterations to the source texts, and adopts adaptations, omissions, and additions etc. to reorganize the source texts so as to satisfy aesthetic needs and reading psychology of western readers. To explore how ideology and poetics influence and manipulate Lin’s translation strategies, the author investigates Lin’s translation techniques from political, religious, and ethical and moral aspects as well as his adaptations in theme and narrative mode and obtains the following findings. On the one hand, the dominant social and cultural ideology and purposes of modern short stories in both China and the western world do exert pressures and constraints on Lin’s translation activities, exemplified by translation material selection and strategies. On the other hand, Lin Yutang, as the subject of translation activities, his cultural preference, translation purposes, familial and marital concepts play a significant role in the selection of translation materials and strategies as well. Therefore, this study proposes that manipulation factors, such as ideology and poetics, should be studied along with the translator’s subjectivity, for the selection of translation strategies are very often synthetic results of multiple factors.