A Contrastive Study Of Back Translation In Two Chinese Versions Of Moment In Peking

Since R. W. Brislin took back translation as the cross-culture research tool in1970s, back translation phenomenon has aroused the attention of the translation field.During more than40years, especially recent10years, fruitful results have beenachieved in the study of back translation. They mainly focus on the research of thedefinition of back translation, the effect of back translation made in translationteaching, back translation evaluation and the skills used in the word, sentence andpassage of back translation, and back translator. Besides, the literary works’ backtranslation was also studied, mainly focused on researching the Chinese version ofChinese English literature, such as The Joy Luck Club and Moment in Peking. However,most people treated it as an ordinary kind of translation phenomenon but not a specialkind of back translation.Moment in Peking, written by Lin Yutang, was a piece of well-known literarywork describing Chinese culture, whose images were reflected richly. That translatingsuch a novel full of unique Chinese culture into its original language----Chinese,naturally possessed features which were different from the ordinary translation. In ouropinion, this unique is that in the process of translation, the translator is always tryingto find the origins of the English expressions that reflected the image of uniqueChinese culture. Fundamentally speaking, the translation of finding the origins is backtranslation, a kind of special back translation, a kind of back translation lack of theoriginal text but original culture. Comparing with the common back translation, thiskind of back translation phenomenon is much more worthy of our concern.The thesis tried to study the Chinese version of Moment in Peking based on theabove point, which means its Chinese translation is a kind of special back translation.From the perspective of translator’s subjectivity, the thesis also contrastively studiedthe two Chinese versions from Zhang Zhenyu and Yu Fei respectively and found thatdue to their different attitude, positions and views to the Chinese and Westernliterature and culture, their different knowledge background and aesthetic appeal, thetwo translators chose back translation strategies and skills differently during theprocess of back translation, thus, the original text presented different appearancebefore the Chinese readers. On the back translation strategies, Zhang Zhenyu did notback translated the person’s names, full back translated the frame, and thoroughly backtranslated Chinese images and culture due to his background knowledge, sympathy, and aesthetic request. While Yu Fei back translated the person’s names, but parttranslated the frame, superficially back translated Chinese images and culture due tohis interpersonal relationship, his special translation purpose and his ways ofexpressing.Regarding Moment in Peking’s Chinese version as a special kind of backtranslation enriched the connotation of back translation. Moreover, it extended themeaning of back translation from translating to original culture instead of to originaltext, and the latter one was much more universal yet more concealed, which is worthyof being dug deeper.