Exploring Back Translation In The Chinese Version Of The Woman Warrior

Over the past decades, the North American literary circle has witnessed a rapid and sustained growth of Chinese American literature, which has won recognition from the American public. This body of fine literature has attained a prominent position in the American literature, writing a glorious chapter in the history of Chinese American literary attainment. Of all the Chinese American literary works, The Woman Warrior is a glittering pearl, a fame-rewarding writing by Maxine Hong Kingston. This book, made up in a tone of story telling and with grotesque plots and rich Chinese cultural elements, consists of five chapters. The Chinese translation of these chapters cannot go without the appropriate use of back translation. In a certain sense, back translation is a very important factor upon which the successful rendering of the story depends. And this can be seen in the Chinese translation of The Woman Warrior by Li Jianbo and Lu Chengyi, a version well accepted by the large Chinese audience. How to assess this Chinese version, particularly the back translation used in it, requires us to answer the question from a better theoretical perspective and to test it by taking into account the receptors'reception and response so as to draw a convincing conclusion.The reason why The Woman Warrior is successful in North America is that it is an archetype of a strong female in legend and literature, who presents to her English readers her stories by blending autobiography with old Chinese folktales in a tone of "talk story". As a result, the book boasts of a characteristic of hybridity. Such hybridity can be explained by the theory of intertextuality proposed by French scholar Julia Kristeva. According to her, every text is a mirror of other texts, constructed as an absorption and transformation of other texts. All of these texts, intertextually referential to each other and linked to each other, form an open network with indefinite potential, offering a text both a constructed open system involving past, present and future and a great evolution process of literary semiotics (Kristeva,1980:396). Based on this theory, this thesis will approach the source text as well as its Chinese version by expounding how each chapter of the book is shaped as an absorption and transformation of other texts. As for the assessment of why the Chinese version of The Woman Warrior is acceptable, it will adopt a perspective of aesthetics of reception by focusing on the use of back translation in it. This theoretical perspective is workable as its discussion on the Chinese version highlights the TL reader's referential role and claims attention to the reception effects of the version upon him, taking into account the reader's reception and response during the process of translating. Guided by these two theories, this thesis deals with not only the intertextual relationship between the English text and Chinese texts but also that between the English text and its Chinese translation. Furthermore, it will, from the perspective of aesthetics of reception, evaluate back translation used in the Chinese version of The Woman Warrior, pointing out both the strengths and the weaknesses in the employment of back translation. This discussion covers the back translation of such Chinese cultural elements as Chinese idioms and expressions of folklore, Chinese calendar, rituals and patriarchy, Chinese names, allusions and kinship systems and Chinese citations and quotations. Through a careful analysis, this thesis comes to a conclusion:The use of back translation in the Chinese version of The Woman Warrior is scientific in theory and successful in practice though it has some defects in some way. Therefore, this Chinese version can be praised as a good example with a great reference value for translators in handling the same topic.