Similar Essence Behind Different Appearances:A Contrastive Study Of Literary Translation Activities In Renaissance And The May 4^th Movement From The Perspective Of Polysystem Theory

The core concepts of Renaissance include humanism, emancipation of humanity and revolt against feudalist and religious autocracy while the essential topics of the May 4th Movement is democracy, science, and nation saving from feudalism and imperialism. However, both of the movements involve wide dissemination of new spirits and ideas and great development of national languages(during Renaissance)and vernacular(during the May 4th Movement). In addition, the May 4th Movement is called Chinese Renaissance by some scholars because of its reevaluation of traditional Chinese culture and the establishment of vernacular literature. In order to spread new spirits and cultures so as to make preparation for social reformations, a mass of literary translation activities were conducted during both of the movements and thus formed a climax in literary translation respectively. Literary translation was of great importance in spreading new thoughts and ideas and public enlightenment.In consideration of the different factors like time, space, culture, and social background, this thesis employs descriptive methods and polysystem theory as the theoretical basis to conduct a contrastive study on literary translation activities in Europe during Renaissance and that in China during the May 4thMovement in terms of translation purpose, translated materials, translation strategy and similar essence.It is found out that there are great differences between the two mentioned literary translation activities in terms of translation purpose, translated materials, and translation strategy. As for translation purpose, the literary translation activity during Renaissance laid particular emphasis on reviving the humanism originated from ancient Greece and Roma and rectifying distorted Christian doctrines and thus humanism was employed to fight against the distorted Christianity and its autocracy.The literary translation activity during the May 4th Movement stressed the introduction of new spirits and ideas, like the concept of science and democracy which were used to break the bondage the traditional Confucian code of ethics caused to humanity. As for translated materials, Renaissance literary translation focused on classics and religious literature while the May 4thMovement literary translation emphasized the importance of translating masterpieces of famous writers and literary works from weak nations. As for translation strategy, both literal and liberal translation, domestication and foreignization coexisted side by side. However,because of different ideological and poetical tasks of literary translation, liberaltranslation and domestication began to caught much attention from translators during Renaissance while literal translation and foreignization were highly spoken of by Chinese translators during the May 4thMovement. Despite these differences, similar essence exists among the mentioned literary translation activities in terms of translation purpose, language strategy and social function. Firstly, both of the activities attached much attention to disseminating humanism, including freedom,democracy and humanity emancipation. Secondly, although the two activities paid attention to different translation strategies, they both highlighted the usage of national languages(in Renaissance) or vernacular(in the May 4thMovement) and promoted the establishment and development of national literature and vernacular literature in Europe and China respectively. Last but not least, in terms of social function, these literary translation activities played a significant role in and accelerated the social reformations in the two movements by means of spreading new ideologies.Application of polysystem theory to study of the literary translation activities during Renaissance and the May 4thMovement not only makes it possible to find out the interactions between the subsystem of translation and other subsystems, but also helps to find out the nature of translation activities beneath difference appearances.