赞助人的隐身: 《金瓶梅》首部英文全译本的副文本研究

As a sophisticated social activity，the publication of a translation is born out of the work of a patronage system，of which the translator is only one player，yet the patrons’ invisibility is still an under-researched area in translation studies. This article，based on the first complete English version of Jin Ping Mei，attempts to uncover the participation and impacts of the patrons in the light of various paratexts. Based on the analyses of the distinctive functions and values of peritexts and epitexts，this article reconstructs the complicated patronage system，challenges the conventional understanding of the translation and translator of Jin Ping Mei，and as such，rewrites this novel’s history of translation and dissemination.