Researches Into The Influences Of The Cultural Capital On Translation Paratexts

The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Tê Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought has been creatively translated by the distinguished English translator — Arthur Waley in 1934 for the first time,which primarily focuses on the representations of Chinese philosophy and then later it has been well-received and frequently-reprinted.At present,researches revolving about Waley's translations of Tao Tê Ching are still confined to the translated text,while little attention has been paid to the causes of its different paratexts of the different editions.In this thesis,the four editions with a longer time span of Waley's translations of Tao TêChing considering both canonicity and popularity are intentionally chosen to be studied.Taking the concept of “paratext” by Gérard Genette as a breakthrough point,there are two kinds of paratextual elements are been concretely analyzed,one is the translation peritext including cover,preface,introduction,illustration,appendices,various notes and etc;the other is the translation epitext made up of Amazon's customer reviews,publishers' advertisements and comments of Waley's translation thought.On an even profounder level,the in-depth research of Waley's intricate translation actions of this specific translation event from the perspective of Bourdieu's three concrete forms of cultural capital is inspiring,namely the embodied cultural capital,the objectified cultural capital and the institutionalized cultural capital.Through the case study of parallel contrastive analyses of Waley's translation paratexts of Tao Tê Ching,the paratexts can be regarded as the results of the active influences or the passive influences of the different translation agents with different cultural capital.In the internal struggles of the cultural capital's three forms,on the one hand,the paratexts of the selected foreign versions represented by the first edition of 1934 are influenced actively by Waley's embodied cultural capital,due to Waley's embodied cultural capital has far surpassed both the objectified cultural capital of the original work and the institutionalized cultural capital carried by the the relevant patronages and publishers,and thus the translator Waley has great discourse power in deciding the final issue of going or staying of those paratexts.On the other hand,the paratexts in question of the domestic version of Library of Chinese Classics in 1999 are affected passively by Waley's embodied cultural capital,specifically speaking,Waley's embodied cultural capital is in a dominated position in terms of the struggling with the institutionalized cultural capital carried by the Chinese state authority and the publisher with the shared interest,ultimately,such paratexts are particularly made to abide by the absolute state authority's will of promoting the advanced culture with Chinese characteristics.In view of this,although Waley's renditions of Tao Tê Ching have been successfully reprinted with dissimilar paratexts,it is not so much through the compromise between the translator and other translation agents as because of the radically dynamic battling of the cultural capital carried by all translation agents.The complexities of the translation activities of Chinese classical literature in the social field can be observed a little bit from the covert active impacts or the passive influences of the cultural capital on translation paratexts.In a word,the research not only fills in gaps of the influences of the cultural capital on translation paratexts,opens up a new way to expand the main studies of paratexts emphasizing instrumental functions,but also breaks the invisible conventions of all translation agents involved in the processes of translation,and further provides a reference for future studies of cultural capital.