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A Study Of Cai Jun’s Chinese Version Of Saving Fish From Drowning From The Perspective Of Deconstructive Translation Theories

Posted on:2013-08-15Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y LiuFull Text:PDF
GTID:2235330377458101Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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In October2005, Amy Tan"s Saving Fish from Drowning was ranked on the bestseller list of New York Times after its publication in America. In2006, Cai Jun’s Chinese version《沉没之鱼》came out in China. Different from Amy Tan, Cai Jun received successive doubts derived from "transwritten by Cai Jun" on the cover. Could the transwriter (Cai Jun) be faithful to the original while transwriting (a combination of translating and rewriting) instead of translating? This has raised doubts among the insiders. However, proved by its high first printing of85,000copies, Cai Jun’s Chinese version did win general popularity among Chinese readers. To some extent, the Chinese version is the "afterlife" of Saving Fish from Drowning. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, this thesis explores Cai Jun’s Chinese version from the perspective of deconstructive translation theories.Deconstruction, which originates from postmodernism in France in the late1960s, is a school of western philosophy originally put forward by Jacques Derrida on the philosophical facet. Later, scholars represented by Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault brought deconstruction into translation studies, creating deconstructive translation theories to interpret the communicative behaviors between languages. They all deny the traditional translation criterion "faithfulness", the eternal meaning of a text and the authority of the author. They stress that the translator is the subject of translation and the target text is the "afterlife" of the source text which depends on the target text to survive. Jacques Derrida holds that translation is characterized by differance, which means both "to delay" and "to differ", as a result of which, different translators may have different opinions towards the same text, thus dissemination arises. Walter Benjamin believes that the translation is the "afterlife" of the original, and without the translation, the original would cease its life. Roland Barthes comes up with "the death of the author", denying the authority of the author and claiming the subjective role of the translator. Michel Foucault disagrees with the idea that the author is the origin of the work.The author of this paper deems that Cai Jun’s "transwriting" itself is a deconstructive translating approach. The Chinese version has well overturned "faithfulness", characterized by the rearrangement of the chapters, paragraphs and sentences from the macroscopic respect and domestication, amplification of the culture-specific expressions and ellipsis of the expressions concerning sex and politics from the microscopic respect. The Chinese version gives an "afterlife" to the original, because according to deconstructive translation theories, without the translation, the original would cease its life in the target language. The Chinese version itself is a great success. What’s more, the Chinese version excels the original in some ways such as the structure and the language. The Chinese version also highlights the subjective role of the translator. For instance, the original is a combination of a "ghost novel" and a "travel novel", while Cai Jun, as a subject and creator, adds something new concerning psychological suspense elements and incorporates his own writing habits. Therefore, Cai Jun’s Chinese version is a good example of deconstructive translation theories.
Keywords/Search Tags:Saving Fish from Drowning, deconstructive translation theories, transwriting, Cai Jun
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