Decontextualization And Recontextualization: An Intertextual Study Of The Two Chinese Translations Of The Lord Of The Rings

Intertextuality challenges the originality of texts and emphasizes their relationalnature. It develops from Saussure’s semiology and Bakhtin’s dialogism. Kristevaformally establishes the term from a poststructuralist stance. Barthes, Derrida andother theorists also contribute to its poststructuralist development while structuralistslike Genette and Riffaterre provide intertextuality with more circumscribedinterpretations and approaches.When applied to translation studies, intertextuality believes that translation canhardly produce an effect equivalent to that of the source text, because the multipleintertextual relations bound in the source text make it impossible to be translatedprecisely into another signifying system. Lawrence Venuti proposes that theproduction and reception of translation is a process of decontextualization andrecontextualization and the translator has replaced the original intertextual relationswith analogous but fundamentally different ones.Constructed on such theoretical foundation, this thesis aims to analyze thedecontextualization and recontextualization process of the two Chinese translations ofThe Lord of the Rings and conclude a philosophical revelation of translation from thisapproach. Three categories of intertextual relations are duly explored, namelyintratextual relations, intertextual relations with other texts, and intertextual relationsin the reception context. The study finds that translators and the receiving audience ofboth target texts have inscribed new meanings to The Lord of the Rings throughinteraction between different texts.In conclusion, translation is intertextual and transformative in nature. It is a dynamic process constantly evolving, and a new life woven by voices from multipletexts. Such philosophical idea of translation calls for model readers with theoreticalawareness and bilingual proficiency to read translated texts as translation and to viewthe decontextualizing and recontextualizing translation as a productive gain ratherthan a product of unavoidable lost. This thesis is a sincere endeavor to do a modelreading. Hopefully, the development of such approach would enhance the relativeautonomy of translated texts and open a new dimension for translation studies.