A Study Of Rewriting In Lin Yutang's Chinese Version Of Dr.Hu Shih—A Philosophe

Andre Lefevere,a representative scholar of "cultural turn" in translation studies,views a translation as a rewriting of an original text.He introduces ideology,economy,poetics and other cultural concepts in this discipline,and particularly emphasizes the impact of target cultures on translations.From the perspective of Lefevere's ideas of rewriting,the thesis is supposed to conduct a case study of Hu Shihtzu from the aspects of ideology,poetics,Universe of Discourse and language.It attempts to dig out the possible causes for Lin's rewriting via massive and first-hand literatures and discuss the concrete phenomena of rewriting in Lin's version by a comparative analysis.Hu Shihtzu is a short biography fewer than one thousand characters,translated by Lin Yutang and first-known to the public in the biweekly magazine The World of Human.It was translated from Wen Yuan-ning's English text Dr.Hu Shih-A Philosophe that was initially published in TheChinaCritic.As a translated text,Hu Shihtzu is of outstanding differences from Lin's other translations for its violence to the translation criterion"faithfulness"proposed by Lin himself.Concerning ideology,the thesis finds that Hu Shihtzu is mainly manipulated by The World of Human and the publisher and re writer Lin Yutang.Against great changes of social settings and cultural status in Lin's age,scholars split into different camps with different cultural orientations.On the one hand,Wen Yuan-ning was cultivated in English cultures and The China Critic was neutral in Sino-western cultures;on the other hand,Lin Yutang dedicated him to Chinese literary revolution and The World of Human was issued for pure expectation of developing Chinese contemporary literature.Therefore,the original is,basically,moved toward Chinese readers.With regard to poetics,Lin's version was produced under the influence of Literary Revolution in the macroscopic view.As the reform of the whole society,Chinese classical literature suffered a severe blow,but contemporary literature met an opportunity of new development.Specifically,Lin's rewriting was closely related to his own literary ideas.As for biographical writing,Wen and Lin both followed the approach of New Biography.Nevertheless,Lin Yutang advocates the expression style of lucidity and pithiness that is delivered to readers like intimate and sincere chatting,which results in lots of omissions and paraphrase of Wen's obscurity and circumbendibus.Furthermore,Lin Yutang complies with the choice of ideology and does target-oriented rewriting of Universe of Discourse and language.Western culture-loaded words and foreign names are omitted or replaced and vernacular Chinese that features oral language gets well presented in Lin's version.Attempting to develop Chinese literature,Lin's rewriting of Dr.Hu Shih-A Philosophe actively borrows methods and elements from western literature to explore the feasibility of rewriting in Sino-western literary translation,shedding lights on the feature literary translation.