On The Cross-cultural Self-consciousness In Lin Yutang's Translation

There have been three translation climaxes in the Chinese history: the sutra translation from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Tang and Song Dynasties; the science translation in the early Qing Dynasty as well as the translation of Western works between the Opium War and the May 5th Movement. However, the current translation upsurge surpasses the above three whether in quality or quantity.Besides, if the former three are mainly contributed to the translation of foreign works, then the present tide is more directed to the opposite side, raising stricter requirements for the translation of the native works. And in this respect, Lin Yutang is a forerunner. Born in a country clergyman's family and brought up in St. John's University, a mission school, he was quite familiar with western cultures. Later on his years in Qinghua led him back to the arduous studies of his own culture. All these combine together endowing him with peculiar cross-cultural background in China at that time, which also provides him excellent chances to do translation work. But it is a pity that so far Lin' s works only draws attention in the cross-cultural field. Few articles are contributed to Lin Yutang' s translation works. Thus this paper is intended to analyze Lin' s translation of some Chinese Classics with the cultural tint from the reader-response perspective in the hope that it can benefit the present cultural translation studies and the overall studies on Lin Yutang to some extent.Precisely speaking, as for how Lin Yutang applies his cross-cultural self-consciousness to his translation practice, the paper analyzes from three cultural perspectives: first in terms of cultural words; then allusions, an element closely related with thecultural background of a country; at last poetry, the condensed kernel of a culture. Through the analysis of Lin Yutang' s strategies in dealing with these cultural elements, we can find that Lin Yutang is highly conscious of the cross-cultural differences. He is not only sensitive to those overtly cultural elements, such as the self-abasing terms but also keen enough to delve out the deep cultural meaning from some apparently familiar expressions.His cross-cultural self-consciousness is further reflected in his translation strategies. Since it is impossible to achieve absolute equivalence, he generally follows the principle "faithfulness," keeping as much of the original taste as possible. But it never means that Lin' s translation is mechanical, dead translation; instead it is almost "invisible" translation, conveying the original meaning to the greatest extent and taking the TL readers' response into full account.In the prolonged course of its development, the Western cultural hegemony envisions the East as its opposite side, which supports its holistic mode of thinking about the East, and thus restricts the spreading of oriental cultures. And in author' s opinion, only by depending on the scrutiny of the SLT and the self-consciousness of the cross-cultural differences can we really seize the charm of the SLT, produce a successful piece of translation work and furthermore realize the equal communication of the oriental and occidental cultures on the international stage.