Abstract

As the core of Bourdieu’s sociological notions, habitus is initiative, generative and accumulative, constantly restructuring itself in accordance with external changes. The notion is frequently used to explain human action. Within the context of Translation Studies, the translator’s habitus can be an analytical tool to analyze a translator’s translation practice and to determine the hidden factors influencing translation behaviors. Lin Yutang is a well-known Chinese translator, and numerous studies have been carried out focusing on him as a translator and his translations from various perspectives. This study attempts to complement these previous studies by employing the concept of habitus. In other words, this study tries to investigate Lin Yutang’s translation habitus in order to more comprehensively understand him as a translator and further understand the restructuring characteristics of habitus. Within the framework of Bourdieu’s Theory of Social Practice, this paper diachronically examines Lin Yutang’s translation habitus through a comparison of his two translations of Six Chapters of a Floating Life which were translated in different times. The findings show that with the change of literary fields and the increase of his symbolic capital, Lin Yutang adjusted his translation habitus accordingly by turning from an “academic translation model” to a “business translation model”, and from adopting a foreignizing strategy to a domesticating strategy.

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