The Translation And Reception Of Pearl S. Buck In The Socio-Cultural Contexts Of China

Among the foreign writers that are translated into China, Pearl S. Buck is very special. By birth she was a white American, but she grew up in China and spent her first half life in China, and she won her world fame for her writing about China. Due to the close relationship between her works and China, the translation of Buck’s works into Chinese changes in different socio-cultural contexts. This dissertation examines the translation of Buck’s works in China, which demonstrates different preferences in different socio-cultural contexts. Based on the relevant theories of the translation studies and taking the Good Earth and the Patriot as the objects of case studies, the dissertation employs a descriptive method to analyze the influences imposed by the socio-cultural contexts, particularly the ideology, on the translated versions, the rewritings of the translators and the influence of such rewritings on the reception of the translated texts. For the severe criticism and complete negation of Buck after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the dissertation studies the critical materials and Buck’s attacked novels and shows the political ideological criteria of those censures. After the reform and opening-up of China, the translation of Buck’s works seemed cautious at the beginning, and then normalized. The dissertation summarizes the features of the translation and the scholar’s studies on Buck in this period. Besides, the retranslated Chinese version of the Good Earth by Wang Fengzhen, Ma Chuanxi and the previous version by Hu Zhongchi is compared in certain aspects, which discloses the influences exerted by respective socio-cultural context on the production of the translated text.There are seven chapters in this dissertation. The first chapter defines the purpose, limit, method and the significance of the research. Chapter 2 is a survey of the translation of Buck’s works before 1949. The Chinese versions of her works published in this period are collected and classified into two types according to their topics:topics on people’s lives and topics on the war against Japanese aggression. The translated texts published in journals and magzines are also collected and ordered. Besides, reports about Buck in the newspapers and magzines are described. All of these show the much attention China paid to her in that period. Chapter 3 takes The Good Earth as the case study, which explores the translation of Pearl S. Buck’s works in the socio-cultural context of pursuing modernization. Three Chinese versions of The Good Earth are analyzed and the research shows how socio-cultural context influenced the production of the three versions. This chapter also discusses the controversy caused by the Good Earth. Chapter 4 studies the translation of Pearl S. Buck’s works in the socio-cultural context of the war against Japanese aggression and takes Buck’s novel The Patriot as the representative of her war-related works. Two Chinese versions of The Patriot are examined thoroughly. The refractions in the two versions are analyzed and how they influenced the novel’s reception at that time is also discussed. Chapter 5 deals with the severe criticism and complete negation of Buck in the 1950s and 1960s in China. Those papers attacking Pearl S. Buck are studied and evaluated in the light of Buck’s capitalistic humanitarianism, opinions on revolution, the attitude towards missionary, ect, and the reasons why Buck was completely negated are also explored. Chapter 6 is on the translation and study of Buck after the reform and opening-up of China. Since 1982, new Chinese versions of Buck’s works have been published and researches on Buck have gained progress. Buck’s works have been studied from various points of view, such as the cultural clash of the West and the East, the post-colonialism, the feminism and so on. The new Chinese version of the Good Earth translated by Wang Fengzhen and Ma Chuanxi in the new socio-cultural context is compared with the Chinese version translated by Hu Zhongchi before 1949 and the differences between them are demonstrated and explained. Chapter 7 is the last chapter, which draws the conclusion on the features of the translation of Buck’s works in China. Most of the translated works by Buck are about China. And the selection of the texts to be translated, the translation strategy and the reception of the Chinese versions are all closly related to the socio-cultural context. In addidition, the identity of Buck is multidimensional, and changes with the socio-cultural context.