Translation Of Chineseamerican Literature And Reconstruction Of Chinese Americans’ Cultural Identity

The cultural identity in diaspora works is one of the eternal themes of ChineseAmerican literature. Through the combination of fictions and facts, merging stories,historical materials, poetry and mythologies, China Men presents the heroicimmigration history of Chinese Americans. Although they had made indeliblecontribution to the construction of American society, they were marginizedas the“Other” and suffered the disaster of discrimination and oppression rather thanobtained due reward and fair treatment. As a Chinese American writer, Kingstoninsists that Chinese Americans should earn their place in America, as well as enjoy afull and equal citizenship. Therefore, she tries her best to combat for ChineseAmericans’ legal status and construct Chinese Americans’ special cultural identitythrough her cultural writing.Composed of five key ingredients, namely value, language, family system, lifestyle and spiritual world, cultural identity is a social construct, developing continuallywith the change of time. From the post-colonialism perspective, cultural identity isstrongly germane to anti-colonial struggle and movement. Moreover, to serve certainpolitical and cultural purposes of a given nation, translation reconstructs culturalidentity through the reconstruction of a specific image of a foreign nation or culture.Therefore, in the translation of Chinese American literature, the translator reconstructsthe cultural identity of Chinese Americans in the target text when reconstructing theimages of the original text.According to the clue of the characters in China Men from losing identity, turning intothe “Other” to seeking and constructing their special cultural identity vigorously, thisthesis investigates the reconstruction of characters’ names, living places, living style,language, poetry and mythologies in the target text. Through the comparison of thesource text and the target text in the above aspects, finally it getsthe conclusion:Because of the translator Xiao’s omission, misunderstanding of the original text and lacking of the consciousness of cultural identity, he is apt to reconstruct the maladjustedrepresentation of the Chinese Americans’ cultural identity, including fade-outing the“Other” identity and under-translating the American identity in China Men. Thishighlights the great difference between the source text and the target text in ChineseAmerican works. Some differences between the source text and the target text areinevitable because of the different contexts between Chinese culture and Westernculture. However, the utmost representation of Chinese Americans’ cultural identity isviable by providing the reference versions in the actual examples, which to some extentmakes a heuristic contribution to translation studies and the study of Chinese Americanliterature.