| In translation between Chinese and English, there is a special phenomenon, that is. when English literary works concerning Chinese-specific items and cultures are translated back into Chinese, it is often related to cultural reconstruction, which is a special case of back-translation. One of Dr. Lin Yutang's masterpieces which earned him good reputation in the western world, My Country and My People, is a typical case of such writings. My Country and My People is composed by Lin Yutang in English, in which he translated large amount of Chinese cultural elements into English.As language has gone through constant changes, different readers in different times may have different demands towards translated works, so good works usually have different versions. Among the three Chinese versions of My Country and My People. Huang Jiade"s and Hao Zhidong & Shen Yihong's have been enjoying better popularity.The present thesis is intended to examine how Lin Yutang deals with Chinese culture in My Country and My People and to explore the issue of cultural reconstruction in its two Chinese versions. Based on the categorization model of cultural elements proposed by Peter Nermark, the author classifies the cultural elements into different sorts and sees how the translators reconstruct them. Also, the success and failure for the translators to reconstruct the cultural elements are discussed. Furthermore, three major causes leading to the two translators'inaccurate reconstruction are generalized as the translators" inadequacies of relevant cultural knowledge, deletion of information in the original text, and the obscure language of Lin Yutang in the original English text.Through detailed analysis, the author hopes to throw some new light on improving the reconstruction of cultural elements in such kind of special works, and to promote the establishment of a more systematic model to better assess the translation of cultural words in such literary works. |
PDF Full Text Request