ABSTRACT
Considering Egerton's skopos of translating, it may not be hard to conclude that transferring the Chinese fictional genre of prose interspersed with verse as represented by JPM is not a top priority in LOTUS. The many English adaptations of JPM in the twentieth century reflect the evolution of the Anglo-American social context, literary censorship in particular, with each version being a product of conforming to or rebelling against its social milieu. Nevertheless, the fact that the translation was not exempt from prosecution represents another aspect of the repressive, or at least influential, power of the social context on shaping a text. Consequently, by interacting with the other agents, the translator was becoming more peripheral and less powerful than he had previously been in producing the draft translation. The interaction between the texts/paratexts and their contexts is, needless to say, materialised through the participation of various agents.
