Translation Strategies And "A Holistic Model Of Translation Process": A Case Study Of Lin Shu's Version Of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Fidelity has often been considered as one of the principal criteria in the evaluation of a translation, along with its maker. For this reason, Lin Shu, one of the Chinese pioneer translators during late Qing dynasty, has sometimes been criticized for his seemingly arbitrary adaptation of the originals in his translation. However, such criticisms seem to have neglected the fact that the translation activity is never performed in vacuum. Instead, it must be restricted by various factors in the objective world as well as in the translator's subjective world. Any translator living in a world completely different from that of the writer can hardly produce a translation that is merely the copy of the original in other language. To Lin Shu, a unique translator who doesn't know any single foreign language, this phenomenon may be more conspicuous.The current study, taking Lin Shu's translation of Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as a case, through an exploration of the factors that lead to Lin Shu's choice of translation strategies, aims to illustrate that the formation of a translation is determined by the participation of the translator's subjectivity and the restraints of the social and cultural factors of the time of translation. Amongst a mass of modern translation theories, Professor Wang Hongyin's theory of "A Holistic Model of Translation Process" serves as the theoretical framework of the thesis. The theory offers a brand-new perspective in analyzing a translation through a detailed and all-round observation of the translation process. In applying the theory to the analysis of the phenomenon of Lin Shu, we find that his World of Translation is displayed clearly step by step. It is evident that Lin Shu's adaptation of the original work is caused by the contradiction between the writer's World of Writing and the translator's World of Translation. With a deep understanding of the Chinese culture and social status but a shallow knowledge of the foreign world, Lin Shu must assimilate the contradiction among them into the Chinese domestic literary canons, which causes his domesticating strategies.The translator, living in a different world from that of the writer and affected by the social and cultural factors of his time, will inevitably construct his own subjectivity, which will lead to his adaptation of the original work, and the overt manifestation of this is the translator's choice of his translation strategies.