A Comparative Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of Small World From The Perspective Of Lefevere's Rewriting Theory

"Cultural Turn", appearing in the field of translation studies in the 1970s, marks a significant shift in the translation studies from the micro linguistic level and to the macro cultural level. Increasingly, scholars come to pay much more due attention to the influence of politics, society, history and culture in the process of translation from the macro perspective. Andre Lefevere, as one of the major representative in the "Cultural Turn", put forward the famous translation theory——Rewriting Theory and pointed out that translation is regarded as a rewriting and translators is manipulated by ideology, poetics and patronage in the process of rewriting.As one of David Lodge'masterpieces, Small World is regarded as Fortress Besieged in western literature. Based on Andre Lefevere's Rewriting Theory, this thesis tries to make a comparative study on the two Chinese versions of Small World (Luo Yirong's version in 1992 and Wang Jiaxiang's in 2007) mainly by examining typical examples from the two versions to exemplify how ideology, poetics and patronage at different times affect the translations. In terms of ideology, this thesis explores the difference of the two Chinese versions from cultural conceptions and ethics, illustrating how ideological differences in the conceptualization of cultural images and ethics of sexuality affect the production of translation; as to poetics, examples are listed the difference of the two versions from sentence structures and language style to illustrate how poetic difference affect the production of translation; lastly, in terms of patronage, the differences of social media and publishing house of the two versions influence translation practice. Through comparative, this thesis argues that from the perspective of Rewriting Theory, the two Chinese translators have rewritten the source text in terms of ideology, poetics and patronage, albeit in a different way. In illustrating how Manipulation Theory has shaped the currents in the field of translation studies, this thesis seeks, hopefully, to contribute to a better and much more nuanced understanding of translated works inside China.