A Study Of The Purpose In Lin Shu's Translation Of Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

The traditional translation theories take the source text as the center, believing that the original author is in the main position. And as the main participant in translation activities,translators are put in a subordinate position for a long time. With the emergence of the"cultural turn" since the late 1970s,translators' status has received more and more attention,thus the purpose of the translator has come into people's sight. As one of the outstanding representatives in the Translation Studies, the Belgian scholar .Andre Lefevere proposed that"translation is rewriting",and the focus of translation started extending from language itself to non-language factors such as society, history, politics, culture, etc.Lin Shu is one of the most important translators in the late Qing Dynasty, and he has translated more than 180 foreign literary works, which got people's approval as well as had a great impact on society at that time. Lin Shu gave full play to the subjective initiative in the translation process, and he cut and adapted the original text to a large extent; therefore,his works were criticized by some scholars. It is very difficult to make an objective and fair evaluation on Lin Shu's translation by using the traditional view of translation. The Rewriting Theory proposed by Lefevere provides an illuminating basis for a comprehensive study of the realization of translators' purpose.Mainly by means of a qualitative analysis in a descriptive manner, this thesis explores translator's ways and means to realize his purpose of translation from the perspective of Lefevere's Rewriting Theory. Through the analysis of Lin Shu's social ideology, poetics and patronage, the thesis explores how Lin Shu achieves his purposes.The study shows that under the influence of the social ideology,translator's individual ideology, poetics and patronage, Lin Shu subjected to these constraints in his process of translation and did a lot of interpretation to the original text,which are closely related to the purposes of Lin Shu. And this thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction, which includes research background, significance,purpose of this thesis, research methods and thesis structure. The second chapter isliterature review. It gives a review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's original work,of Lin's translation and of the Rewriting Theory. The third chapter mainly discusses the related contents of Rewriting Theory. The fourth chapter is the main part of the thesis, in which the author studies how translator's purposes are manifested in Lin Shu's translation of Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu from the perspective of Rewriting Theory. The fifth chapter is the summary of this study, which will talk about the major findings of the thesis and suggestions for the future study concerning this topic.