Abstract
Lin Shu’s Chinese translations of foreign novels at the turn of the twentieth century, contributing partly to the emergence of modern Chinese language and literature, have been criticized for their unfaithfulness and rewriting of the source texts. However, from the perspective of intercultural communication, his rewriting strategies, presenting certain patterns, become valuable clues of cultural mediation and ideological manipulation in his time. Based on a systematic comparative study of David Copperfield and its Chinese translation by Lin Shu, this paper makes a detailed analysis of the language and rewriting strategies in the translation, and summarizes the rewriting patterns. It then discusses how the language strategies and rewriting patterns reflect the translator’s cultural mediation and ideological manipulation of the poetics of translation, which was presented by his multidimensional ambivalent mentality when he as a patriotic intellectual was turning to the Western culture in the historical turning point of great social transformation in China. Underlying the translator’s individual ideology, the manipulation of the mainstream social ideology is also discussed, which reflects the mutual relationship between politics, poetics, and ideology in that special historical period.
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Notes
In this paper, all citations from Chinese references were translated by the author of the paper except for special indications.
The Tongcheng school was one of the chief literary schools that flourished during the Qing period (1644–1912). The school advocated the philosophy of the Neo-Confucians, who had flourished in Song times (960–1279), combining it with emphasis upon rigorous textual scholarship and the use of simple and unadorned prose. The Tongcheng school was of national importance in the late 19th century, one of its advocates being the great general and modernizer Zeng Guofan (曾国藩). Several of the earliest translators and experts in Western affairs belonged to the school. (see https://global.britannica.com/place/Tongcheng#ref1001044; also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongcheng_school, and http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-05/20/content_7824869.htm, accessed 30 September 2017).
In this paper, all the English in brackets after the Chinese are all back translations of the Chinese. In addition, the parts in bold in the Chinese translations and their back translations are added by the author of the paper for emphasis in the comparison with the original parts.
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Funding was provided by The Research Grant of Huaqiao University for High-Level Research Projects (Grant No. 16SKBS207).
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Zhu, L. Rewritings in translation as clues of cultural mediation and ideological manipulation: a case study of Lin Shu’s translation of David Copperfield . Neohelicon 45, 351–366 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-017-0415-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-017-0415-8