Understanding the Image of Jews in a Chinese Translation of The Merchant of Venice Accompanied with A Paratext

William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice(1600)is controversial as a result of its negative depiction of the Jewish figure Shylock.In translating this literary work into Chinese,the translator is quite possibly involved in reconstructing the image of Jews,as Shylock being the representative in The Merchant of Venice,consciously,or unconsciously.In this paper,the translation of The Merchant of Venice by Shiqiu Liang(2001)is selected to find out how the image of Jews is conveyed to the Chinese readers.Due to the translator’s translation principle of being loyal to the original text,the content in the original text is transferred to the target readers without manipulation.However,the translation work was conducted with a particular social background which is believed to have influenced the translator’s interpretation of the original text.Accompanied the selected translation is a paratext,in which the translator expresses his own opinion on both the playwright and the Jewish and non-Jewish figures in the play;with this paratext,the target readers understand the figures in the play in a different way.Therefore,a different image of Jews is reconstructed in the translation,which is mainly analyzed at the level of larger textual units reflecting hierarchical relations from the perspective of imagology.