A Comparative Study Of Three Chinese Versions Of The Joy Luck Club From The Perspective Of Cultural Presupposition

While the research on presupposition as a controversial issue has been extensively invoked in philosophical and linguistic studies, the notion of cultural presupposition and its relation to contextualization have received much less attention in translation studies. Cultural presupposition refers to the shared knowledge which can be comprehended without being told by participants in communication. Writers tend to assume a considerable number of presuppositions consciously or unconsciously as they write and these assumptions form the basis for effective communication. Translation is surely subject to the existence or absence of the relevant cultural background knowledge since translating, translating of literature in particular, means translating cultures between different languages. Therefore, cultural presupposition deserves particular attention of translators for any unawareness of it on the part of translators can influence the full comprehension and correct interpretation of the source text (ST). However, to explicate excessive presupposed knowledge in a target text can run the risk of frustrating its readers’ expectations of what is being stated and leave readers with nothing to do.This thesis intends to give a detailed account of how cultural presuppositions assumed in a ST affect the production of the target text (TT). It is also an attempt at rethinking the relationship between cultural presupposition and cultural mistranslation, which is mainly caused by cultural presupposition, cultural differences and cultural default. Contextualization, the conceptualization of context in the translating process, is proposed to be a solution to translation problems. After an introduction to contextualization, the thesis then explores how the presupposition is related to the dynamic negotiation of context in translation and elaborates on different translation approaches adopted by three translators to the same text.This discussion is supported by numerous examples selected from three Chinese versions of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. This thesis concludes, from examples analyses and comparisons, that a closer attention to cultural presupposition and contextualization in translation can contribute to the successful making of the TT and that the translation strategies different translators employ vary considerably according to their judgment about readers’ assumed knowledge.