Skopos and ideology in the rewriting of Su Manshu and Chen Duxiu's Chinese translation of Les Misérables

• Main Author: Tong, Qiying
• Other Authors: Cui Feng
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Language
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/72413
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Literature translation culminated in late Qing dynasty in the early 20th century because of the novel revolution proposed by Liang Qichao for the purpose of enlightening Chinese and encouraging them to fight for a democracy republic against late Qing government. Novel translation emerged as characteristic of literary translation, shouldering the responsibility of conveying patriots and translators’ ideology, political ideas, and skopos. Accordingly, translation at that time, also known as Haojie Yi, showed its unique “free translation” style and features, which have drawn quite a few discussions on it. Among the substantive work and studies that have been conducted on analyzing novel translation in late Qing dynasty from perspectives of ideology and functional theories, studies on how do translators choose and apply translation strategies and techniques to meet their potential readers’ expectations, such as lessen the cultural heterogeneity in the source text so as to avoid readers’ ostracism toward the book, and to deliver their political skopos remain underdeveloped. This paper would discuss the Chinese translation of Les Misérables by Chen Duxiu and Su Manshu from perspectives of ideology and skopos. Moreover, instead of a traditional translator-oriented or text-oriented angle, a readers/audience-oriented comparative analysis would be carried out to probe into choices and adaptations that Chen and Su made to the translated part as well as the skopos they expect the translatum to convey. Conclusions and implications were drawn accordingly. First, translators place readers’ preferences and taste over translational principles when certain translational skopos were considered. Second, adaptation of form and narrative style were made to minimize readers’ ostracism toward novels. Third, rewriting content served as a miniature of social realities of early 20th century, which could be of great importance for relative studies. From the case study of Les Misérables, the translating process would be reconstructed to further facilitate in-depth translation studies as well as literary and social studies. Key words: Ideology, Readers’ expectation, Skopos, Rewriting