A Study Of English Translation Of Furongzhen From The Perspective Of Manipulation

Gu Hua's full-length novel,Furongzhen,receives much attention since it was published in 1981,and wins the first Mao Dun Literary Prize.The year of 1983 sees its English version rendered by Gladys Yang and the same year appears its publication sponsored by Chinese Literature Press Panda Books,with another name as A Small Town Called Hibiscus(which is named as Furongzhen in the followings for convenience).However,since its publication,it seldom obtains wide attention.However,this special Chinese literary work with its Chinese political colors and narrative languages,be it original text or English one,deserves the further research.Edified by the Poly-system theory,the representative of manipulation,Lefevere,begins to integrate ideology,patronage and economic elements into the category of translation studies,which provides an utterly new angle for the studies of the translation activities.This thesis mainly adopts Lefevere's manipulation as the theoretical basis,with Gladys Yang's translation of Furongzhen as the object,to analyze the reasons why this work is selected and why these translation methods,such as omission,footnotes and rewriting,are adopted from the three controlling factors: ideology,poetics and patronage.Through the comparative analysis between the original text and the target text,the major findings of this thesis are illustrated as follows.Firstly,the translated text of Furongzhen rewrites the preface and the postscript of its original,which is perhaps influenced by the publishing house.The Chinese Magazine Literature and the translator makes modulations to cater for the reading anticipation of the target readers;Secondly,numerous deletions and conversions of the contents,such as different political systems between western countries and China,the appraisal of socialism and derogation of capitalism and different policies toward Taiwan,and the important historical heroes and the special periods of China with footnotes could be explained from the different dominant ideologies between western countries and China and from the translator's ideology;Thirdly,the translated text has written the dialects and customs of its original and changed the writing style,which is presumably affected by the view of poetics the translator has owned.All these modulations are conductive to the wide acceptance of the western readers.Manipulation to some extent better explains the phenomenon of deletions and rewriting,and we could draw the conclusion that in the process of translation,deletions and rewriting of the original text are affected by the three controlling factors of manipulation: ideology,poetics and patronage.Lastly,manipulation not only explains the Translation of A Small Town Called Hibiscus,but also helps us utilize manipulation to direct our later translation practice.