On Rewriting Under The Influence Of Ideology And Poetics

The text translated is chosen from the semi-documentary literature A Stone Boat written by Andrew Solomon,a well-known writer and psychologist in America.During the translation,the target text,instead of being altogether "loyal" to the expressions and wordings in the source text,is more or less rewritten.In view of this situation,this paper is written to explore its main causes and find out what translation strategies can be adopted.Given that the theme of the text is euthanasia,a sensitive topic against traditional Chinese culture,the translation will be bound to be affected by such a cultural context.Also,the text's identification as a literary work makes it more possible that the rewriting theory brought forward by Andre Lefevere be the theoretical guidance of this translation practice.Based on the results of former studies,this paper aims to track down the translation strategies catering to the chosen text and its kind in the perspective of ideology and poetics,two influential factors in the rewriting theory.Through detailed analysis of several cases,it is shown that when it comes to contents unpopular in the traditional Chinese culture,such as the choice of euthanasia and taboo words like "dead","death" and "die",the author either rewrites them in a euphemistic manner or just deletes them,whereas the impact of poetics is mainly reflected in the translation of culturally-loaded expressions,particularly that of cultural images.Through the retaining,replacement,deletion and addition of such images,the author tries her utmost to make the translated text smoother to meet the target reader's reading habits alnd aesthetic expectation and thus make it easier for them to understand and accept others' choice of euthanasia.