Self-translation & Creation Of Different Images Of China

The earliest records of Chinese immigration to the United States began in 1750s, while the large-scale one appeared only after the year of 1894, or the Gold Rush. With this immigration, the Chinese American Literature gradually emerged, which experienced a dramatically circuitous development from being ignored to being concerned, from being marginalized to being accepted in the past 100 years.With double identities and particular life experiences, most of the Chinese American writers possess deep perception of two different cultures and keep a close eye on the thoughts about destiny and life choice of Chinese American group who have survived in the conflict between Chinese and American cultures, who serve as a bridge between the two cultures both consciously or unconsciously by bringing typical Chinese characters, plots and stories to the American stage.Many works are created in the manner of the author’s self-translation about Chinese culture without the original texts. With combinations of writing and translating, those works in English differ from the traditional translation works and English literary works for the original texts invisible in the mind of authors, and hardly noticeable to readers consequently its features of self-translation are usually ignored by readers.Basing on the clues of the Chinese elements self-translated in the Chinese American literatures, taking such representative works among Chinese American literatures as examples, this thesis makes analysis and interpretation by comparing different translated versions about the same Chinese characteristic elements, like the Beijing City in late Qing Dynasty, China town, the main principles of social order ,foot-binding and so on.This thesis includes five chapters. Chapter I introduces the research, methodology and literature review; Chapter II defines Chinese American Literature, and then summarizes the development and subjects of Chinese American Literature; Chapter III discusses self-translation and its definition given by present academic field and analyze its realization in Chinese American Literature; Chapter IV explores the creations of Chinese images and the existence of self-translation by comparing Chinese elements; Chapter V reviews the research findings, the limitation of the thesis and the direction for further exploration.To sum up, the author argues that methods and features of self-translation vary from situation to situation in the creating process.