Exploring "Third Space" In Cultural Hybridity

Postcolonial theory has become the most influential cultural criticism since1980s. Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhabha are three giants in this filed. Postcolonial theory has great significance in resisting cultural hegemony of western culture. This thesis introduces the emergence, development, and the main representatives of the postcolonial theory. As the leading figure of this theory, Homi Bhabha’s theory is the key part of this thesis and is analyzed in detail. Homi Bhabha mentions cultural translation in his book The Location of Culture. Under the perspective of postcolonial theory, the inequality between strong culture and weak culture leads to the inequality in cultural translation.Retrospecting the whole history of poetry translation in China, Byron was one of the most popular western poet. And his poem The Isles of Greece which is an interlude of his major work Don Juan was translated by many Chinese translators. Liang Qichao was the first person who translated this poem. In his political novel《新中国未来记》,he translated the first and third strophe. In1905, Ma Junwu translated the whole poem for the first time. What’s more, Su Manshu, Hu Shi, and Liu Wuji also translated this poem. After the Liberation, Zha Liangzheng and Zhu Weiji translated the full text of Don Juan.The translation versions of this poem are studied by many scholars. But most of the studies are concentrated on domestication, foreignization and the form. This thesis analyzes different translated versions from cultural translation with a perspective of postcolonial theory aiming at getting illuminations in translation. Under the background of globalization, translation, as a major tool of cultural communication, plays a very important role. During the process of translation, translators should realize the hybridity of cultural translation and try to create a "third space" between two different cultures. On this platform, different cultures can respect each other and communicate equally with each other. As for the enrichment of Chinese culture, self-optimization is necessary, but it should absorb the essence of other cultures through translation. In a word, hybridity and "third space" of Homi Bhabha pave the way for the intensive study of cultural translation.The main contents are as follows:The first chapter is Introduction. It mainly introduces the theoretical background and four translated versions of The Isles of Greece. The second chapter states the research status of postcolonial in China and its influences on translation at home and aboard. The third chapter deals with the cultural translation under the background of postcolonial theory. It introduces the emergence, development and representatives of postcolonial translation theory. Meanwhile, it also discusses the development of cultural translation. Chapter four analyzes the four different translated versions of The Isles of Greece as well as the cultural hybridity in each version. It also discusses how to break away from the binary oppositions of two different cultures and realize a "third space". Through the analysis of different versions, Chapter five mainly discusses the illuminations on translation from the perspective of cultural translation, that is, translators should seek a "third space" from cultural hybridity in the process of translation.