On Lin Yutang's Cultural Concept From The Translation Of His English Essays In 1930s

Traditionally, translation is regarded as an activity of conveying one language into another. In recent years, translation theorists begin to take it as an activity of cultural exchange, that is, it is not only a linguistic transformation, but essentially a cultural communication. Much attention is being paid to culture in western translation studies. Many Chinese translation theorists and translators have done a lot of work in this field. While Lin Yutang considered culture as a very important element in the process of translating in the early 30s in the last century.This thesis is intended to discuss Lin Yutang's English essays and their Chinese versions in 1930s. Lin Yutang wrote English essays first and later translated them into Chinese by himself. Why Lin wrote in English first and chose those topics concerning Chinese cultures and western cultures is the focus of this thesis. To analyze this, the author made an in-depth research on Lin Yutang's cultural concept and bilingual writing. Second, this study also touches on how Lin translated English essays into Chinese. To throw light on this, the author analyzed Lin's translation theory.Lin's essays mainly reflect his thoughts, opinions and unique cultural concept. In 1930s, Lin Yutang had reached the peak of his essays writing since he began his literary career. People are generally familiar with Lin's Chinese essays, but in fact, these Chinese essays do have their English originals. These English originals were generally first issued in The China Critic Weekly, while those Chinese versions were published in Lun Yu, This Human World and The Cosmic Wind later.The reasons for Lin to write these essays are inseparable from his exceptional growth environment, educational background and life experiences. The contents of his essays reflect the cultural differences between the western world and China. So we should consider his unique cultural concept when analyzing his essays.There are some reasons for Lin Yutang's bilingual writing. First, he has a rich knowledge and deep understanding of the Chinese and western cultures. Second, with his mastery of the English language, he was able to adequately introduce the Chinese culture in English to the Western readers. Third, his positive attitude towards life and religious background is also one reason.In Lin's translation of the original English essays, the translation principles and techniques he used are consistent with his own theory of translation. His translation theory is included in his article, On Translation. In analyzing Lin's translation practice of essays, we can see that as a translator Lin Yutang was trying to achieve balance among the source text, the target readers and the art so as to convey the contents and the form of the source text, and help the target readers to understand the target text better. But not every Chinese version of his essays is faithful to the original. This sets the translation researchers to thinking how to achieve mutual balance in dealing with the three standards of faithfulness, fluency and beauty. The findings of this research have some implications for the research on Lin Yutang and his works as well as his translation theories.