Back Translation And Reproduction Of Author's Style In Chinese American Literature-A Case Study Of The Joy Luck Club

Featuring the distinctive perspectives of diaspora group, Chinese American literature has just received its due attention from both international and domestic academic circles and readers in the last 40 years. The extensive and successful employment of code-switching in English and Chinese lends a special flavor to Chinese American writers? works.But till now the domestic studies on Chinese American literature still only concentrates on its literary value and cross-cultural function, but rarely on its translation. By carrying out its discussion in a postcolonial context, this paper intends to shed some new light on the back-translation in Chinese American writers? works.As a successful piece of postcolonial wring, Amy Tan?s famous novel The Joy Luck Club is characteristic of its skillful writing tactics and distinctive writing style. This paper chooses The Joy Luck Club as a study subject and summarizes three types of noteworthy back-translation texts: Romanized Pinyin + Literal Translation, Chinglish Sentence Group and Proper Noun + Cultural Translation. Some useful translation techniques are illustrated and appropriate translation standards are proposed in this paper as well. Furthermore, it also confronts the disparities between translator?s subjectivity and author?s intention and points out that translators still need to explore more effective methods in order to maintain the balance between these two forces.In translating this novel, how to present author?s original writing method to Chinese readers becomes the number one task in translating this novel. The case study of The Joy Luck Club is mostly descriptive and typical examples selected from the source text and its four Chinese translations are investigated and explored. This thesis aims to generate a system of translation principles, which can be applied not only to this novel but to the translation of most Chinese American literary works as well. This thesis also aims to prove that whether the original work?s style can be successfully reproduced owes much to the back-translation?s quality.The present thesis is just a preliminary study of the back-translation problem and related strategies. Further improvements are still expected from the translating field.