On The Reconstruction Of Female Images From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

Translation studies has made great progress since the 1950s and its perspective of research has also become more diverse. However, on one hand, some scholars realized that studying translation merely from the linguistic level was far from enough and at the same time the source-text-oriented research model put traditional translation into a deadlock. On the other hand, the Manipulation School, represented by Andre Lefevere,started to study translation on the basis of cultural approach. According to Lefevere,translation is a rewriting of the original text. All writings, whatever their intention, reflect the manipulation of a certain ideology, poetics and patronage in a given society in a given way. The rewriting theory fundamentally changed our traditional view about translation and opened up new perspectives for translation studies, thus becoming the mainstream of Western translation studies."The Myth Retelling Series" was launched in 2005 by Jamie Byng,the man in charge of the British Canongate Books,a famous British publishing company. They invited writers from various countries to choose a myth and retell it. There are altogether 25 countries in the world involved in this activity. The Chinese writer - Su Tong was also invited. He chose the well-known story of Meng Jiangnu for his myth retelling and produced the book Binu which was published by the Chongqing Publishing Group in 2006. The novel retells the classic myth, mixing the author's personal style with some modern color. This is the first book produced by Chinese writer as part of the myth retelling project. Its English version was produced by American Sinologist and translator Howard Goldblatt. Then it was also translated into French, Korean, Finnish, Slovak language and so on.This book is a retelling of myth and can also be regarded as a reconstruction of ancient culture. It represents the increasing global publicity and popularity of Chinese culture. Domestic scholars generally study this book from the perspective of myth retelling and feminism. However, up till now, very few scholars have done systematic research on Binu and its translation, and even fewer scholars have studied it from the perspective of rewriting theory. Therefore,this essay attempts to analyze Binu and its English translation from the perspective of rewriting theory and will mainly focus on reasons of Goldblatt's rewriting under the influence of the three constraints - ideology,poetics and patronage, as well as how his rewritings contribute to the image reconstruction of Binu. It is hoped that the present study may offer some useful insight into the in-depth study of the image reconstruction in literary translation.