Abstract

Traditional poetry translation studies often emphasize on the reproduction of the form or meaning and the translatability of poetry, not beyond the constraints of linguistic analysis. This paper sets out to discuss English translation of Chinese poems within a larger social, political and cultural context. According to André Lefevere, the leading representative of “Cultural school”, translation is a rewriting or manipulation of an original text mainly influenced by three social and cultural factors, that is, ideology, dominant poetics and patronage. Translation doesn’t go on in a vacuum and is bound to reflect a certain ideology and poetics. Translators from different social-historical backgrounds are manipulated by different ideology, poetics and patronage, and often rewrite the original to different degrees to meet the target cultural demands in different times.

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