On Extra-textual Factors In Translation Of Xi Jinping Important Speeches At The Belt And Road Forum For International Cooperation (2017) From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

Traditional translation studies focus on the linguistic and textual aspects from a micro perspective to assess the quality of translation according to various translation standards.Since the “cultural turn”,scholars have realized that translation,as a complex activity,is also influenced by many extra-textual factors in social and cultural contexts.Among numerous translation theories,Lefevere's manipulation theory brings the social and cultural factors into the translation studies,and holds that patronage,ideology and poetics are the three major extra-textual factors exerting manipulation on translation,which provides a new perspective for translation studies.Political text has ever been studied by a few scholars because of its political sensitivity and authority.In recent years,with the improvement of China's international status and the importance of foreign publicity,political text's translation has received great attention.However,most scholars center on the translation of textual level with the purpose of improving the acceptability of translation in the target culture but ignore that the foremost function of the political text is also to convey Chinese policies and image.Therefore,the translation of political text is inevitably manipulated by numerous social and cultural factors in China.Under this circumstance,this paper,based on the manipulation theory,makes a comparative analysis on Chinese and English versions of President Xi Jinping's important speeches at the Belt and Road cooperation summit with descriptive method,aiming to reveal the manipulation exerted by the three main extra-textual factors patronage,ideology and poetics in translating political texts.Through analysis,the author finds that patronage offers great financial support,status support and publicity support to translation,meanwhile manipulates the theme of translation for cooperation.And patronage's ideology and social mainstream ideology cause effect on translators' attitude,translation purpose,translation strategy and translation principle,and at the same time,poetics exerts its manipulation in the translators' translation stage to ensure the translated version meeting the aesthetic habit of target readers anddelivering President Xi Jinping's personal poetics.This paper takes the English translation of Xi Jinping's important speeches as the research object to explore the influence of extra-textual factors on the translation,which is a necessary supplement to the study of political text's translation and aims to bring some enlightenment to the further study of political text's translation.