Transformation In Transition And Translation

The crisis brought about by modern civilization has promoted a global ideological trend of cultural root-seeking, which in turn the rediscovering of the fine traditions and wisdom through cultural reflection in order to respond to the various challenges posed by globalization. China is a country with an age-old cultural heritage in the world, but in consequence of the influence of western civilization, traditional culture and customs have been affected and as a result,social life is in a sharp shift. The rapid development of the economy at the same time leads to loss and change of local traditional culture. In 2003, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and China acceded to the convention as the sixth member country the following year. Since then, China has started a massive inventory nationwide of its intangible cultural heritage(ICH), which is initiated by the centrual government for the purpose of protection and inheritance, and a large number of texts on ICH thus come into view. With the deepening of the protection work of ICH worldwide, more and more texts of ICH in Chinese are gradually being translated into English for the purpose of introducing Chinese culture to the world.Although the inventory and recording, as well as the translating and diffusing of ICH have undoubtedly been conducive to its protection and inheritance, it is also inevitable that the ICH are faced with the risk of loss and change in the process of text-formation. Folk culture has, to some extent, experienced a variation in the process from field to desk, and it is very possible that the world presented by the texts has been kept at a distance to the real world while the words of the culture bearers are being framed and frozen into texts. At the same time, suffering from the concussion of modernization, the declining ICH is in need of language as its carrier in order to achieve “cross border” and to be known to the outside world, however, the hands of the translator may drive the texts in the target language to an even farther distance from the original version. Therefore, from the field to the texts in Chinese and then in a foreign language, ICH may have experienced a transformation of meaning in the process of “transition” and “translation”, which can be thought as a process of transformation from the“original self” in the field to “self” in the Chinese text and finally to the “other self” presented to the readers by the translator in a foreign language text.Starting from the generation and formation of the Chinese texts of China's ICH, and with examples of Chinese folk literature within the ICH List, this paper analyzes the possible loss and change of meaning in the course of the text- formation. With reference to the currently available English-Chinese versions of the provincial and municipal ICH Lists, the paper contrasts the similarities and differences between their bilingual texts. It analyzes and sums up the translation errors from both language and cultural perspectives in the bilingual versions of the Lists, hereby pointing out in the end that there might exist a dual meaning loss for China's ICH during the course of its transition from field to Chinese text and finally to English text. The paper also puts forward the problem of the presentation and expression of ICH and some countermeasures to avoid misunderstandings. Moreover, it proposes to maintain the originality and heterogeneity of ICH. On the one hand, active cooperation amongst all the participants involved in ICH work including the culture bearers should be sought, and the field work and text compilation should be carried out adhering to “the native's point of view”; on the other hand, in order to enhance the understanding of unique Chinese indigenous culture by western society and increase the effectiveness of cross-cultural communication, a combination of translation strategies should be implemented, which is mainly foreignizing assisted with domestication, in addition to appropriate “deep translating”. The importance and significance of cultural reflecting and root seeking has been emphasized in the end. So far, no one has linked the formation of both Chinese and English texts of China's ICH to examine the whole process,during which the original meaning may experience change and loss. Facing the dilemma of human civilization, modern society is deeply troubled by materialism and consumerism; it is undoubtedly the case that the presentation, reflection and inheritance of ICH are of great practical significance.