The manipulation of poetics in literary translation- A case study of Journey to the West by W.J.F. Jenner

Abstract

Journey to the West is one of four Chinese classical classics whose cultural and literature value has been explored and studied by countless experts and scholars and it has been translated into many different languages. Since the late twentieth century, with the advent of the cultural turn in translation studies, the problem of cultural translation has moved to the forefront. According to Andre Lefevere's Rewriting Theory, translation is not merely an act completed by the translator's personal preference, but an act influenced by various forces including ideology, poetics and patronage in the overall environment. This paper attempts to probe into W.J.F. Jenner's translation of Journey to the West through some approaches including the contrast between Chinese and Western poetics and the trend of poetics in W.J.F. Jenner's time and his individual poetics. It aims at demonstrating how poetics plays an important role in translation. © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.