Translation Manipulated by Ideology and Poetics—A Case Study of The Jade Mountain

Beyond the traditional linguistic analysis in translation studies, this paper goes further to look into the relationship between translation and history, society, and culture. According to André Lefevere, translation is a rewriting or manipulation of an original text and all rewritings reflect a certain ideology and poetics. This paper takes Witter Bynner’s translation The Jade Mountain as an example to elaborate how ideology and poetics manipulate poetry translation, including the choice of theme and translation strategy. Generally speaking, if translations are not in conflict with culture’s ideology and dominant poetics, they are easier to be accepted. That’s the reason why The Jade Mountain has received great popularity both as translations from the Chinese and as English poetry in the West.