A Comparative Study Of The Four Chinese Versions Of Psychology Of Sex From The Perspective Of Lefevere's Manipulation Theory

Language reflects people's value in a certain society.With time going by,the views on sex including sexual intercourse and sexual relations,etc.have been changed greatly.These changes can be analyzed concretely in terms of selection of source texts and translation strategies.This paper takes four Chinese versions of Psychology of Sex in three different periods as the research object,based on literature combing,text reading and descriptive research methods.The methods complement each other.It applies Lefevere's manipulation theory,starting in the important nodes of Chinese society,pursuing the difference between the translations of “information" and “language style”,and asking questions: how did ideology,poetics and patronage change in these periods? How did they affect the translator's choice? What did influence the choices of translation strategies? What did direct the tendency of language style? What did influence the decision of the publisher? Etc.Under the discussion of the above issues,it aims to study and analyze the connection among ideology,sponsors and translation materials,translation strategies and language styles.The study finds evidence that the translators adopt different translation strategies and techniques,and some translations are deleted and added.Due to the prevalence of the Three-character Principle,namely faithfulness,expressiveness and elegance,from the period before liberation to the early days of the founding of New China proposed by Yan Fu,the translations in 1988 and 1946 tended to be more faithful to the original text.After the Reform and Opening-up,views on homosexuality have changed in the academic field.The coming 21 st century has been undergone great changes on the understanding and definition of homosexuality in academic fields.Therefore,translations in 2006 and 2011 have made major changes to the definition of homosexuality and attitudes to it;the change in the status between men and women has also allowed translators to make changes on gender-discriminatory translations,which is the product of manipulation of ideology.The transformation in poetics have also contributed to the manipulation of poetics from 1946 to 2011.In this period,the vernacular Chinese that is in common use enabled translators to complete the transition and transformation of the language styles,that is,transition and transformation from using vernacular Chinese combining with classical vocabulary to using the vernacular around the whole text.The mainstream thoughts,the movement for the mind and interests drive the patronage to select the works and appoint translators,and directly intervene in the translation strategies and contents.The relatively open sexual environment of the Republic of China,the "fever of Freud" in the 1980 s,and the loose and enlightened sexuality after entering the 21 st century,those provided the soil for the selection of patronage.This study intends to utilize Lefevere theory to explain and study the cultural and linguistic factors behind the translation and rewriting of the scientific book Psychology of Sex by publishers and individuals in different periods.The research hopes to provide some materials for the translation history of non-literary works in the past 100 years and hopes to help the progress of later translation studies.