The Study On Cultural Hegemony In Literary Translation

First of all, this thesis begins with the study on post-colonial theory and cultural hegemony. Briefly speaking, post-colonialism is cultural colonialism, which is reflected as that the western countries continue to control the third world nations in culture after the latter get their nominal independence. Post-colonial theory is the criticism on post-colonialism. It appeared after post-colonialism and came into being at the end of 1970s in the USA, then spread to Europe and the academic focus of European and American middle bourgeoisies. The origination of the post-colonial theory has its own reasons: the first one is that the relationship between eastern countries and western countries got changed after World War II, the second one is that the intellectuals with eastern ancestry and experience came into western academic field, the third reason is the nationalism's re-rise after cold war, and the last point is that developing countries pursuit for national cultures' independence in the era of economic globalization. In addition, the exploration of cultural hegemony's meaning and representation is very useful for the discussion of this thesis.Secondly, this thesis explores the cultural hegemony's influence on literary translation from several aspects. The first aspect is the analysis about Chinese and Western cultural exchange situation. Because of the cultures' difference between the East and the West, the hierarchy concept has been built in people's mind, that's the west culture is regarded as the advanced culture, while the east culture is considered as backward. During the cultural exchange process, usually strong culture exports its various cultures by means of different ways to reach the aim of colonization. However, what weak culture can only do is resisting the strong culture passively, which brings about the result of losing its own characters and falls in the danger of being assimilated. The second aspect is the representation caused by cultural hegemony in translation. The so-called hierarchy concept about culture has led to the appearance of the phenomenon that the eastern translators cater for the Occidental readers' taste and aesthetic standard by sacrificing their native culture's features to please the Occidental readers. The third one is the brief discussion about the influence of cultural hegemony on literary translation. It may influence the translator's choice about the literary translation's material, the translator's strategies, and the acceptation of literary translation works. The last aspect is the tentative study about the theme of this thesis by taking examples. In fact, during the translation of some literary works, the translators consciously or subconsciously show that their cultures belong to a superior cultural system, and give priority to the target language culture in translation. Through the case study of the translation of Honglou Meng, the author tries to analyze the unequal cultural exchange between Chinese and English, which is the specific representation of cultural hegemony.Thirdly, this thesis puts forward some preliminary suggestions about how to resist cultural hegemony in the translation of literary works. These suggestions may have some effect on promoting our national culture's development and realizing the equal cultural communication in literary translation.Lastly, the purpose of the thesis is to analyze the cultural hegemony in literary translation. The time of globalization has set up a broad platform for exchange of different cultures, however it inevitably poses great dangers for weak cultures. In literary translation, the influence of disparity between strong cultures and weak cultures can be detected in the whole translation process, and the development of those weak ones are in return restrained by the influence. The exploration of cultural hegemony in literary translation makes more people get the knowledge of the existence of cultural hegemony and arouses their awareness of building equal cultural exchange.This thesis is composed of six chapters:In chapter one post-colonial theory and cultural hegemony are discussed.Chapter two is the exploration about the influence of cultural hegemony on literary translation.Chapter three is the detailed introduction to Honglou Meng's author and its translation versions.Chapter four is the kernel part of the whole thesis, which illustrates the cultural hegemony on literary translation with the cases coming from Hawkes' English version of Honglou Meng.Chapter five gives some suggestions to call on resisting cultural hegemony in literary translation.Chapter six is a conclusion in which key points are again summarized.