A Study Of Sidney Shapiro's Translation Of Jia From The Perspective Of Field-Habitus Theory

Since the beginning of "sociological turn" of translation studies,the focus of translation studies has shifted from text to translator and the social environment.After Bourdieu extended the field-habitus theory into the field of cultural production,scholars also embark on exploring how social factors affect the translator's translation process.Sidney Shapiro is a special translator in the history of contemporary Chinese translation.His translation work The Family published in 1958 is still the only English translation.In the 1950 s,after the founding of the People's Republic of China,translation activities were mostly organized by China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration,serving politics to establish a new look to the world.To explore Shapiro's translation process in this period,this paper takes the concept of "field-habitus" in Bourdieu's sociology as the theoretical framework to conduct a case study on The Family.Firstly,this paper attempts to reconstruct the power field,literary field and translation field in the 1950 s.Then by analyzing his educational background,life experience,social status,translation activities and thoughts,this paper tries to explore how Shapiro's translation choices which are externalized from his habitus are reflected in The Family.Based on the analysis of The Family,this paper finds that Shapiro intentionally strengthens certain feature of the characters in the translation,which indirectly promotes dramatic effects and readability;the combination of domestication and foreignization of the special terms and expressions enhances the readability of The Family while retains the features of Chinese literature as much as possible;omission of the less critical plots and characters has lightened readers' reading burden and then promotes the readability.So far,under the background of Chinese culture "going out",Shapiro's translation strategies are still worth thinking and learning.