A Study On The English Translation Of Yan Lianke's Work Wei Renmin Fuwu From The Perspective Of Lefevere's Rewriting Theory

Yan Lianke is one of the Chinese writers who have received most attention from overseas literary circles. He has already had many of his works translated into several languages. The novel Wei Renmin Fuwu is among them. It was first published in the first issue of Huacheng magazine in 2005. Once published, it caused great controversy among the literary circle of Chinese mainland and before long it became a banned book. Still, it was later translated into Serve the People! by the British translator Julia Lovell who is also a sinologist.And it was the English translation of this banned book that earned Yan international attention.Unfortunately, the studies by domestic scholars are far from sufficient, either studies on the translation of Yan's works or on the translator Julia Lovell. Most existing researches on the translation of Yan's novels can be divided into two groups. Some are carried out from the perspective of medio-translatology, discussing the translation and introduction of Yan's novels in another countries like France. The others are carried out to analyze certain translated texts,discussing translation skills and translation strategies involved. In addition, the latter ones are mainly centered on hot translated texts such as Dingzhuang Meng and Shouhuo. However,researches on the translated texts of Yan's novels by virtue of translation theories are rarely seen. In particular, the English translation of Wei Renmin Fuwu is almost neglected by domestic scholars.Since the 1980 s, along with the culture turn of translation studies, researches on translation have been conducted at the cultural level. Lefevere's rewriting theory was also formed at that time. Lefevere holds that translation is cultural communication between different languages and translation activities are held under a series of constraints. Lefevere points out that translation is a kind of rewriting as well as manipulation of the source texts.Translation activities are influenced by poetics, ideology and patronage.This thesis studies the English translation of Wei Renmin Fuwu from the perspective of Lefevere's rewriting theory. A descriptive research method is applied in this research to analyze the whole process of the translation of Wei Renmin Fuwu. Focusing on the threeaspects of the source text choice, the target text production, and the acceptance of the target text in the target culture, this thesis discusses how the three factors put forward by Lefevere –poetics, ideology and patronage – have exerted influences on the translation and introduction of Wei Renmin Fuwu in the US. To be specific, this thesis discusses firstly, how poetics and ideology have influenced the patronage's decisions and actions, and secondly, how the patronage has manipulated the translation of Wei Renmin Fuwu. This study finds that the whole process of the translation of Wei Renmin Fuwu, with Grove as the publisher and Julia Lovell as the translator, is manipulated by the patronage under the two constraints of poetics and ideology. The patronage has determined the source text and made certain rewriting. As a result, the intended effects expected by the patrons have been achieved. Therefore, it can be considered as a successful translation activity.The purpose of this thesis is to make up for the lacks of domestic researches in this respect, to discuss to what extent the rewriting theory can explain the translation of Chinese literature works, and whereby to provide some implications for future translation of Chinese literature works and to provide references for future studies.