A Study Of Choices In Julia Lovell's Translating From Bourdieu's Perspective Of Capital And Habitus

Based on social context,translation is a practice that is jointly implemented by actors in the translation field.The translator is the actor most closely related to the translating activity,whose translational actions are influenced by various actors in the field.Sociology can effectively analyze the translator's choices of the original text and translation strategies in the translating activity.As a Neozoic Sinologist in Britain,Julia Lovell has translated The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China in 2009,which was published by the classical literature department of Penguin Group and well-received in the British academics.This thesis,based on Bourdieu's theories of capital and habitus,examines Lovell's choices of the source text and translation strategies in her translating activity,so as to provide a new theoretical perspective for the study of translator's translational action.Based on Bourdieu's perspective of capital,this thesis examines Lovell's selections of the original text by analyzing the capitals of Penguin,the symbolic capital of the original work and the cultural capital of Lovell.Based on Bourdieu's perspective of habitus,this thesis classifies Lovell's habitus into historian habitus,translator's habitus and initial habitus,and describes their influences on her translation habitus(also translation philosophy);in terms of linguistic transformation and cross-cultural communication in her translating process,the translation philosophy of Lovell are investigated respectively from two aspects—free translation vs.literal translation,domestication vs.foreignization.Finally,the major findings of this thesis are that Julia Lovell's choices of the original text are not only driven by her personal educational experiences and individual interests,but also more influenced by the capitals brought by other actors involved in the translation field,especially the capitals of Penguin Group.As a historian and translator,Julia Lovell has developed a “reader-oriented” translation philosophy under the influences of her different professional habitus,initial habitus and the competition of capitals in the field.In translating,Julia Lovell's specific translation strategies generally present the characteristics of“reader-orientedness” and “uncertainty”.In order to make the target readers have a smooth reading experience,Lovell freely translates some forms that cannot be reproduced in the target text.However,because of her deep knowledge of the specific habitus about Chinese literature,Lovell unconsciously highlights the subject of the original text.In cross-cultural communication,Lovell prefers to adopt domestication strategy to make the subject of the translated text easier to be understood by the readers.The comprehensive use of these translation strategies reflects that the translator's choices of translation strategies are influenced by various factors in the social field,and are the subjective initiative of the actor's mind and body schema derived from the social structure.