On The C-E Translation Of Mai Jia’s Jie Mi From The Perspective Of The Manipulation Theory

The translation of contemporary Chinese literature is conducive to the overseas dissemination of Chinese culture.And those renditions that have gained great popularity among Western readers are of vital significance in promoting the program of “Going Global” for Chinese culture.Jie Mi is one of the representative works of the contemporary Chinese writer Mai Jia.It was translated by British sinologists Millburn and Payne,and published by the British Penguin Publishing Group and the American publisher Farrar,Straus and Giroux in 2014.Regarded as the first Chinese contemporary literary work selected into the “Penguin Classic”,this English rendition broke the sales record of Chinese literature published abroad on the first day after its publication.All of these indicate its popularity among the English-speaking readers.Currently,existing studies of the English rendition of Jie Mi mainly focus on either the status quo of its overseas dissemination or the translator’s specific translation strategies and methods.Yet there is scarcely any detailed discussion on the influences of external factors affecting the translation of Jie Mi,especially those from sociocultural aspects.Hence,an interpretation of translation phenomena from the sociocultural perspective can lead to a clearer understanding of the translation of Jie Mi.The Manipulation Theory can serve as a good theoretical basis for the present thesis.The Manipulation School represented by André Lefevere places the translation activity under the social and cultural background,proposing that translation is a kind of rewriting and manipulation of the source text.To be specific,the translation activity is restricted by ideology,poetics and patronage.For one thing,the choice of the original text for translation should conform to the mainstream ideology and poetics.For another,to some extent translators are supposed to rewrite the text,aiming at meeting the requirements of ideology,poetics and patronage in the target culture.In view of this,this thesis takes descriptive and qualitative methods to analyze the English translation of Jie Mi under the theoretical framework of the Manipulation Theory.Through research,it is found that the production and dissemination of the English rendition of Jie Mi can be attributed to the joint effects of ideology,poetics and patrons.To start with,ideology mainly affects the translators’ choice of material for translation and specific translation strategies.To be specific,the translator Millburn’s preference for spy fictions leads to her choice of Jie Mi as the source text for translation.And influenced by political and religious ideologies in the mainstream culture of the target language,Millburn and Payne mainly adopt the domestication strategy in dealing with political and religious conflicts so as to meet the reading habits of Western readers.Secondly,it is revealed that many factors such as the literary genre of spy fiction,the prototypical character of secret intelligence agency,the poetic and prosy language style of Mai Jia,and the motifs of love and patriotism all live up to the standards of Western mainstream poetics.Of course,there is no denying that the two translators,Milburn and Payne are also successful in preserving and reproducing these poetic features in their rendering of Jie Mi.Last but not least,it is concluded that the literary agent,publishers,and the mainstream media have also exerted an important impact on the translation of Jie Mi in terms of the whole translating process.In short,the English translation of Jie Mi is subject to such factors as ideology,poetics and patronage during the whole translating process.