A Study Of Lin Yutang’s Self-translation Of Between Tears And Laughter—a Comparative Study Between Li Yutang’s Version And Song Biyun’s Version

Self-translation refers to "a translation accomplished by the author of the original text"(Hелюбин,2003:13), which turns to be a special and interesting translation phenomenon. The study on self-translation not only enriches translation theory, but is of great importance to translation practice. The adoption of translation strategies and methods by the self-translator as well as his disposition of various translation problems gives inspiration to ordinary translators, enabling them to produce translation works with higher quality.Usually, self-translators are also bilingual writers, which means self-translation is rarely seen. In China, there are several self-translators such as Lin Yutang, Xiao Qian, Eileen Chang, Pai Hsien-yung, etc. Although there have already been some studies on their self-translation activity, most of them focus only on the self-translated version. However, the best approach to self-translation study is to compare self-translated version with non self-translated one. And this is where our thesis proceeds from. The author takes bilingual writer Lin Yutang’s translation of his English writing Between Tears and Laughter as a case study, and compares his self-translated version with Taiwanese scholar Song Biyun’s version, summarizing the characteristics of Lin’s self-translation and exploring factors that influence Lin’s self-translation as well.Through this comparative study, we summarize the three features of Lin Yutang’s self-translation:Chinese version more amplified than its English origin; translating the general idea instead of word-for-word translation; much flexible Chinese syntactic structures. Based on the above, we find out the translation strategies adopted by Lin Yutang in the process of self-translation:paraphrasing, literal translation with notes and free addition. Moreover, the thesis makes an analysis of the factors influencing Lin’s self-translation--the content of the English origin, the translator’s translation concept and his consideration of the target reader.Compared to ordinary translators, the self-translator has much more profound and comprehensive understanding of the original text. For what he translates is his own works. Although some of Lin’s self-translated works are considered unfaithful, and even can not be regarded as translation in its real sense, the author deeply believes that Lin’s self-translation of Between Tears and Laughter is not only the most faithful translation, but a translation that even surpasses its source text due to Lin’s good master of both Chinese and English and due to Lin’s achievement both in Chinese and Western cultures.