| Recently, the literature circle has attached more importance to the ChineseAmerican literature including Amy Tan’s maiden work The Joy Luck Club. The noveltells a story of four Chinese immigrant families, in which the relationship between themothers and the daughters is from conflicts to mutual understanding. The book turnedout to be a success upon its publication. The appearance of numerous Chinese pinyin inthe Wade-Giles system of Romanization as well as the mothers’ Pidgin English whichenables the readers to feel the novelty and experience the cultural conflicts betweenChina and western countries, but poses a great challenge for the translators. So far, thereare altogether five translated versions. Tian Qing’s version (1992) and Cheng Naishan’sversion (2006) are selected in this paper for the two translators with distinct identitiesdiffer from each other in tackling the relationship among the original author, translatorand the target language reader.Intersubjectivity was first put forward by the German Phenomenologist Husserl,and then improved by the later scholars, and eventually established. Intersubjectivity isoriginally a philosophical concept, and then widely applied to diversified disciplinesincluding translation. Intersubjectivity in philosophy refers to the characteristics of theinteraction among the subjects. Therefore, the intersubjectivity in translation refers tothe correlation among all the translating subjects during the process of translation. Itstresses that translation is a cross-cultural communicative activity in which the threeinteracting subjects should abide by communicative criterion to make the constructionof a favorable translation model possible.Based on Habermas’ intersubjectivity, this thesis conducts a comparative study ofthe two Chinese renderings of The Joy Luck Club by adopting the three validity claims,namely truthfulness, sincerity and rightfulness. Through the comparison and analysis,this thesis attempts to examine whether the communication among the original author,translator and the target language reader in the two Chinese renderings complies withthe three validity claims and give a rational evaluation of the two versions, in an attemptto create a more standard translation and improve the translation level of such kind ofliterary works.Specifically speaking, as for truthfulness claim, the two translators make a truestatement of the objective facts in large part, but with regard to several mistakes in the original work, Tian Qing retains the original content while Cheng Naishan rectifies themistakes, in line with the objectivity of the knowledge. Moreover, Cheng Naishanmistranslates some contents in the novel, which goes against the truthfulness. Withregard to sincerity, Tian Qing’s version to a large extent respects the intention of theoriginal author and satisfies the expectation of the readers in translating RomanizedPinyin, Chinese names as well as Chinese legend. By contrast, Cheng Naishan resorts tothe literal translation strategy in tackling the specific contents deliberately arranged bythe original author and the omission strategy in translating Chinese legend, with theresult that the target readers will not experience the impact as the source languagereaders do. As to the rightfulness, Tian Qing and Cheng Naishan choose right utterancesfor the target readers to accept, but some of Cheng Naishan’s renderings are beyond thecomprehension of the target readers.Through the comparative research, it could be found that Tian Qing’s version to alarge extent complies with the three validity claims except a few violation behaviorswhile Cheng Naishan’s rendering just caters to the target readers’ reading habitregardless of the elaborate arrangement of the original author due to her status as awriter so that some of her renderings violate the three validity claims. |
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