Reconstruction Of The Cultural Affinities

As a special translating method, back-translation is often encountered by translators in their real life tasks. Compared with forward-translation, back-translation has its own features and difficulties. How to effectively back-translate not only affects the reading experience of the public, but also affects restoration of cultural images and concepts. This thesis takes back-translation as its theme and probes into the following topics: the difficulties of back-translation, the translating process and the roles played by translators. Through these discussions, the author intends to provide some helpful suggestions for translators in carrying out their back-translation assignments.In the Introduction, the author sets out to explain the motive behind her choice of the topic and briefly introduces the structure of the thesis. Chapter One reviews the definition and application of back-translation, and makes a distinction between communicative and non-communicative back-translation. Chapter Two analyses difficulties involved in back translation in terms of ST's diachronic characteristics, authors'interpretation and translators'cognitive limitations. Building from Chapter Two, Chapter Three defines back-translation as a process in which the translator tries to overcome the above-mentioned difficulties and reestablish cultural connections between ST and its target readers. In this chapter, the author dissects back-translating process into two phases. i.e. the analysis phase and the output phase. The analysis phase is a phase in which the translator discerns and determines his native cultural symbols. The translator sifts through ST for clues and activates his own reservoir of cultural cognition, fumbling for the right concept and image. The output phase is one in which the translator puts pen to paper and moulds cultural symbols into words. Taking into consideration readers'cognitive consonance, the translator adjusts his TT from two levels, i.e. word level and style level. In the last chapter, the author discusses the role played by the translator in the whole process and points out that the translator should respect ST and reign in his own native cultural cognition while back- translating. The Conclusion part sums up the whole thesis and points in the direction of future research on back-translation.