A Contrastive Study On The English Versions Of Ershisi Xiao From The Perspective Of Andre Lefevere's Three Factors Theory

Ershisi Xiao,written by Guo Jujing of Yuan dynasty,has colloquial language,simple contents,vivid and touching plots.It not only becomes one of the enlightening reading material for children in Yuan dynasty,Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty,but also enjoys wide popularity in China's neighboring countries,such as Japan,North Korea and South Korea.Since 1980 s,western translation studies took an important turn.André Lefevere,the representative of the Culture School,proposed the “cultural turn”,which puts translation studies under a certain historical background,instead of being restricted to the text.This study offers a whole new perspective for translation studies.From his point of view,the nature of translation is an activity of rewriting and manipulation.And the three major manipulated factors are ideology,poetics and patronage.This thesis makes a contrastive study between the two English versions of Ershisi Xiao from the perspective of Lefevere's Three Factors Theory,namely ideology,poetics and patronage,and endeavors to find what and how the three factors influence both the process of translation and translation strategies.And the author finds out that,both the two versions are influenced by social ideology,translators' ideology and readers' expectations,and to different degrees by literary poetics of source language and target language,and also by patronage more or less.And as a result,it can be seen clearly that the two translators took different translation strategies,David K.Jordan prefers literal translation while Yang Hun prefers free translation.To sum up,through detailed contrastive study,the author tries her best to reveal the complicated relationship between the two English versions of Ershisi Xiao and ideology,poetics and patronage.It also hoped to make contribution to the translation of Chinese filial piety culture classic.