Contextualized Study of History of Czech Literature in Chinese Translation: 1921-2020

The present study is the first systematic attempt to survey the history of Czech literature in Chinese translation in a century-long time span, a largely under-researched area which certainly merits more academic attention and efforts. It aims to present a descriptive, contextualized, target-oriented translation history research into the introduction of Czech literature in China from a socio-cultural perspective. It also makes an endeavor to answer the major research questions of "what", "who", "how" and "why", by examining the socio-cultural conditions in three historical periods (1921-1949, 1950-1977 and 1978-2020) and investigating their influence on the selection of texts for translation, the characteristics of translators, the adoption of translation approaches, the choice of intermediate languages, and the employment of various translation strategies. Theoretically, Even-Zohar's (1990) polysystem theory, Toury's translation norms, and Lefevere's rewriting theory, which view translated literature as part of the polysystem, conceptualize translation as a fact of the target culture, and perceive translation as rewriting which reflects manipulation by ideology and poetics, are most relevant to our study and serve as the theoretical underpinning of this thesis. Methodologically, this study is an..