A Study On The Variations In Xiao Suozhang’s Version Of Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men

China Men is one cross-cultural narrative book written by Chinese Americanwriter Maxine Hong Kingston. Since its publication in1980, it has aroused wideconcern and has already been translated into Chinese and Japanese. This book rich inChinese materials became the best-seller in the western world then; however, back toChina, it was given a cold welcome. China Men is a book which narrates thehistorical stories of ethnic males in a feminine tone to reconstruct the Chinese culture.It is worthwhile paying attention to and studying both its English and Chineseversions. There are three Chinese versions: the Taipei edition is out of print; LiMeihua’s version has the deviations in some difficult parts of history, religion, andallusion; Xiao Suozhang’s version is now the universal edition. Therefore, this thesiswill take Xiao Suozhang’s Chinese version published in2000as the object of studyand do a tentative study on the variations in translation and the underlying culturalmotives from the perspectives of the study of literary variation and post-colonialtranslation theory.The word “variation” here refers to changes of images, cultural misreading,aesthetic reproduction, amplification, distortions, deviations, etc the translator hasmade in character, language and culture due to various internal and external factorsin translation. Chapter One discusses the variations in the characters of China Menfrom the descriptions in the myths and the modern stories, and the section of modernstories includes the misreading of cultural-specific words and the variations in poems.Chapter Two focuses on the variations in the language, which mainly analyzes thedialogue of Chinese people including their broken English and pragmatic utterance,and then the cultural elements of idioms, and the foregrounding words. ChapterThree unfolds the variations in the Chinese customs, in which it talks about theethnic markers such as forms of address, wedding and funeral ceremonies, etc, andelaborates its “talk-story” strategy. By analyzing this, it makes clear that due to the difference in language, culture and image, the translator tends to adopt the strategy ofdomestication, which gives rise to the loss and distortion of the original image,language and culture. These variations on the one hand embody the “decolonizingconsciousness” of the translator; on the other hand, the “oriental flavor” is wiped out.As what we have mentioned above, it is reasonable to conclude that incross-cultural narrative works, different cultural identities would clash, negotiate andcollide with each other, which will definitely result in the variations along withdecolonization and the erasure of oriental flavor in translation. This thesis aims atmaking the contributions as follows: firstly, we hope to observe the rule oftranslation activity from another point of view; secondly, this thesis will do a casestudy applying Cao Shunqing’s study of literary variation to practice and we hopethat the translation of Chinese American literature will enrich the text-orientedresearch; thirdly, we hope this thesis would provoke the thought on how to spreadcontemporary Chinese American literature around China and whether the variationswith dual cultural features could go global.