On Ye Gongchao’s Distance Away From His Peers

Ye Gongchao,one of the significant educators and critics in the 20s’ and 30s’ of the last century,though left imprints on his understanding of introduction and translation of foreign works into China,has never been paid the equally much attention to as a translator or translating researcher who should have been.By introducing many important novels and novelists or poets that were creative and pioneering in writing techniques into China,such as T.S.Eliot,he injected fresh vitality into the literary world where there were stale traditional literature and political propaganda literature,to build the purity of the literary world with aesthetic value.His translation approach could be concluded as a source-oriented one that can be distant from readers in that he was in pursuit of the authenticity of the translation to the original.What this essay tries to discuss over is mainly his introduction and translation activities and thoughts,focusing on his distance away from his peers around the 1920 s to the 1930 s who consisted of the members of the Left-wing League,the opposite right-wing group and the middle liberal intellectuals in the aspects of his different choices of literary works to introduce and translate to China,his different approaches to translate or rewrite the originals,in order to demonstrate the Psychical Distance he pursued contributing to the aesthetic value of works.With the Distance theory and the manipulation theory,we talk about the insertion of Distance in his activities and its effects to aesthetics and his special position in constructing literary system in China and finally outline his poetics of the authenticity and purity of literary world from the exposition.