A Study On Three Chinese Versions Of A Passage To India From The Postcolonial Perspective

Postcolonial theory addresses the differences in cultural status, power struggles between cultures and series of other issues related with culture and power differentials, such as racism, cultural imperialism and cultural identity. Postcolonial translation studies born in the mid to late1980s originates in postcolonial theory and inherits the cultural and political critical discourse of postcolonial criticism. In the postcolonial context, translation is no longer a purely linguistic and largely impersonal process for achieving semantic equivalence between texts. Pushing back the boundaries of what is legitimately regarded as translation studies and denying the utopian hypothesis on linguistic and cultural equalities in traditional translation studies, postcolonial translation studies probes into translations’ subversive influences on the target culture, and external restraints such as ideology, power differentials, political and cultural conflicts that affect the production of translations. Concerned with the asymmetrical power relations between nations, cultures and languages, postcolonial translation studies points out that translation has been used as a tool of colonization in many respects but meanwhile it has been used, and should be used, to resist colonial or post-colonial power. Translators, as a key factor influencing translations, play different roles in the postcolonial context. Some become accomplices of colonizers, accepting colonial discourse without any resistance and perpetuating colonialism; Some others turn out to be a main force in resisting colonialism or post-colonial power through their "resistance","presence" and "visibility".Based on postcolonial theory and postcolonial translation studies, this thesis attempts to examine translators’attitudes towards Indian culture and Forster’s colonial discourse (acceptance or resistance) in three Chinese versions of Forster’s A Passage to India. The three Chinese versions are by different translators. The first version published in1988(T1988) was translated by Shi Youshan with other two collaborators-Ma Zhixing and Dong Jiping. The second one of1990(T1990) was by Yang Zijian and Shao Cuiying. The third and the latest translation (T2003) published in2003and reprinted in2008was retranslated by Yang Zijian himself alone. By comparisons of translators’ways to deal with Forster’s colonial discourse and Indian cultural elements between the three Chinese versions, this thesis finds out some differences in translators’ attitudes towards Forster’s colonial discourse and Indian culture and then analyzes the reasons for the differences based on translators’ inner factors and external forces. Looking into these differences, this thesis outlines one representative translation phenomenon-Chinese translators, constrained by the principle of faithfulness, exhibit not so much sheer resistance to Forster’s colonial discourse by radical ways as partial resistance or the down-playing of the discourse by mild and subtle means. By observing Yang’s attitudes towards Indian culture and western culture, this thesis foresees hybridization gaining more popularity as a conception of decolonization and an enrichment of human society in the future translation field.