The Autopoiesis Of Translation System From The Perspective Of Luhmann's Social System Theory

Lolita has a variety of Chinese translated versions,and it is the most famous work of Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov.The most part of the novel is about the confessions made by prisoner Humbert.It mainly tells us a love story between a middle-aged man and a teenager girl.The novel is full of word games,and includes a lot of rhetoric devices,such as pun,allusion,metaphor and alliteration.The whole book mainly consists of Humbert's confessions in his first person and its obscure language depicts a tragedy for readers.Moreover,the complicated writing skills and high-valued literary also makes the novel become well-known at home or abroad.The paper begins from the discussion of sociological translation and applies Luhmann's social system theory into translation studies through the research method of case study and descriptive translation study.The author stresses on two concepts in SST: autopoiesis,communication.It is suggested that the two concepts can be connected with translation.That is to say,translation also can be considered to be an autopoietic system,and what makes the system keep normally operate are autonomy,heteronomy and communication between autonomy and heteronomy,which can be showed in Zhu's translation Lolita.Firstly,the autonomy of translation refers to target culture system,and it can be showed in domestication strategy,and the author analyzes the translation from four aspects: four-character structure,ABB reduplicated words,the change of sequence and free translation.Secondly,the heteronomy of translation refers to source culture system,and it can be showed in foreignization strategy,and the author analyzes the translation from three aspects: the long and complicated sentence,the retaining of French words and translation of names.Thirdly,communication can be seen not only in domesticating and foreignization strategy,but also can be showed in a translating practice of footnote.The form of footnote can connect autonomy and heteronomy through communication.Through the analysis,the author concludes that SST can explain translation phenomenon thata combination of domestication and foreignization strategies exist in one translation and hopes this research could be helpful for the future relevant studies.