A Comparative Study On Two Chinese Versions Of A Thousand Splendid Suns From The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

With the rise of “cultural turn” in the 1970 s,translation study shifted from linguistic perspective to cultural perspective.Some western scholars were gradually aware of importance of culture in translations and began to pay attention to some non-linguistic factors affecting translation activities.They put forward some new translation theories from new perspective,including rewriting theory or manipulation theory.Andre Lefevere wrote a book Translation,Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame to expound his theory.Lefevere argues that translation is influenced and manipulated by three elements,that is,ideology,poetics and patronage.During translation process,translators will have to make necessary rewriting of the original texts to meet the requirements of dominant ideology and poetics.Based on rewriting theory,this thesis analyzes how translators chose different translation strategies to cater to ideology or poetics theyare living in and how patronage exerts an influence on the two Chinese versions of A Thousand Splendid Suns.In result,different translation strategies lead to different translation products.In the first place,from the ideology perspective,because of the influence by the different ideology in Chinese mainland and Taiwan,Li Jihong in Chinese mainland and Li Jingyi in Taiwan respectively used the opposite translation strategies.Li Jihong adopted domestication and free translation methods while Li Jingyi preferred to foreignization and literal translation.In the second place,from poetics perspectives,the two translations chose a large number of four character idioms which strengthens the function of aesthetic perception of literary works.Last but not least,patronage has significant influence on translation versions.Li Jihong's work deleted some politically sensitive words in original sentences.Through rapid publication,publisher was eager to occupy book market.Unfortunately,many translation errors can be found in Li Jihong's version.