Construction Of Cultural Identities From The Postcolonial Perspective

Postcolonialism, a multi-cultural political theory and critical methodology, is a very important theory in today’s translation studies. It provokes us to think in fruitful ways about the internal relations between literature and culture, and about politics and economics as well. Born in the1980s, postcolonial translation study is the application of this theory in the field of translation, which puts translation in a certain historical, political and cultural context, probing into the close relationship between translation and the cultural hegemony, translation and the construction of cultural identities. Cultural identities are of great importance to national cultures, especially to the marginalized or weak cultures. When translating works into the language of the strong culture, it is important to keep the characteristics of the national culture and language of the original one, thus remaining their national cultural identities.Setting translation in the postcolonial condition, we can uncover the relationship between historical conditions and translated works, which is just a blind spot in traditional translation studies. Because of little study in postcolonial translation study in China, it is of great significance to introduce this theory to rethink about the Chinese culture and the translation history. The imperial impact and the semi-colonization in the Chinese history have left a large space for postcolonial translation study.In the perspective of postcolonial translation theory, this thesis aims to make a comparative study of the two English versions of a well-known Chinese novel Fu Sheng Liu Ji, one by Lin Yutang and the other by Shirley Black from three aspects of constructing cultural identities:religious identity, social identity and aesthetic identity. From the comparative analysis, the author hopes to prove that Lin used translation as a weapon to fight against the cultural hegemony, transmit the Chinese culture and reconstruct its cultural identity. On the contrary, Black displayed the Western translator’s prejudice and contempt towards the weaker culture in his version.It is concluded that only through rewriting the cultural identity can a nation construct its cultural character and resist the Western hegemony, and effective translation strategies can be a catalyst in the process. Neither foreignization nor domestication can fulfill the task of constructing cultural identities. It calls for a combination of hybridity. The thesis also points out that the mission of constructing cultural identities can only be achieved by the translators of the Third World nations.