Seeking For The Third Space In Cultural Translation

Since the1980s, postcolonialism has been standing out conspicuously in westerncultural circles and literary studies, being one of the newest streams of thoughtjumping from the border to the hub of cultural studies. It was initially introduced toChina in the1990s. Postcolonial criticism, represented by the Indian scholar HomiBhabha, stands for the latest development of western postcolonialism. Researchers intranslation field began to recognize the significance of integrating postcolonialtheories into translation studies.The “cultural turn” has made the term “cultural translation” a hot word in essaysor articles on translation issues home and abroad. It is also found in the writings ofpostcolonial scholars. The thesis is a primary attempt to adopt postcolonial perspectivein the translation studies, focusing on how to seek for and construct a "third space" incultural translation."Third space", a key concept of Homi Bhabha’s postcolonial theory,refers to the space appearing during cultural communication. It is believed thatnegotiation on equal base between cultures can be conducted in this space, thus theissue of cultural difference can be coped with properly.The thesis first put forward the idea of exploring cultural translation phenomenonfrom the third space perspective. Then it expounded in detail the property of culturaltranslation, the coordination of third space and cultural translation, its feasibility andfactors that may pose influence on the research. Then to verify the idea above, a casestudy was made with a cultural-literary-lingual mode, extending the traditionaltranslation research into a broader level of literature and culture.The research of the thesis has redefined "cultural translation" after the "culturalturn", which is no longer confined within words but a hybrid with differentconnotations. Second, the relation among cultural translation, third space and culturaldifference was clarified, namely, cultural difference can be located properly in thirdspace through the approach of cultural translation. And with the case study, the relationof two cultures, three powers affecting the translation output, together with howtranslators deal with translation strategies and methods are presented in detail.