On The Export Of Chinese Culture From The Perspective Of Post-Colonial Translation Study

Culture is the soul of a country. Without it, a nation will not be dynamic however strong its economic or political power. Under the backdrop of globalization, there have been formed two parallel yet opposite cultural trends (Zhu Weilie, 2002). On one hand, globalization promotes the spreading of the western values. The western capitalist countries led by the United States try to propagate and spread their cultural values throughout the world based on their enormous economic and technological strength, in an effort to grasp the cultural leadership of the world and to become the leader of the world. On the other hand, globalization boosts the cultural nationalization and localization. Many developing countries have increasingly realized the importance of protecting the national culture and began to highlight the publicity of their culture. China, however, lags far behind in this regard. As a developing country, Chinese culture is not only impinged by the western aggressive culture, but also the other peculiar cultures of the developing countries, like Korea. Therefore, to introduce Chinese culture to the world and make its essence known by the world is a major task of the translation field.Over two-thousand-year development, translation has finally been studied in the cultural perspective. Cultural translation began in the 1980s, and was not studied in the broad social and political environment until the middle and late 1990s, which was mainly influenced by the latest academic tide in recent years—post-colonialism(Wang Dongfeng, 2003). Post-colonialism is mainly concerned with the unequal cultural relation between the strong culture of the developed countries and the weak culture of the developing countries. Post-colonial critics hold that the former still dominates and controls the latter. Post-colonial translation studies the cultural relationship between the original and the target languages. This thesis, by applying post-colonialism to translation study, and analyzing the cultural situation of China, probes into the cultural relationship between the Chinese text and its translated text in the western countries, provides some suggestions for the translation strategy in response to the urgency of the export of Chinese culture, and finally points out that two aspects should be noted to give a full play to the role of translation in this great mission: One is to carefully select the translation material; the other is to adopt the proper translation method—foreignization and notes, through which Chinese culture can be discharged as completely as possible.At present, there are few articles in the translation field of China that have related Chinese cultural situation to translation study. Therefore, this thesis wishes to make some breakthrough in this respect, offer some hints to the translation study in hope that more scholars in this field can probe into this issue and bring out the obligatory function of translation in the export of Chinese culture and the cultural identity of China in the world at large.