Study On Lin Yutang’s Outlook Of Translation From Cultural Studies’ Perspective

Lin Yutang (1895-1976), a world-famous writer and translator. He devoted his whole life to introducing classical Chinese literature and culture to Western countries. His writings were full of elegance and casuality, who had great influence among contemporary writers. He edited and translated traditional Chinese literature which were highly favored by Western readers. Until recent days, Lin Yutang still provided many other topics worth mining for the field of translation studies.However, because of political and historical reasons, until the early1980s, Lin Yutang’s English writings in the United States gradually began to be translated and published, and also the research on Lin Yutang warmed up rapidly in Chinese mainland, which were not incompatible with his historical status and outstanding contribution in the field of translation. In recent years, many scholars began to undertake a thorough analysis on Lin Yutang, which could be seen evidently from the publishment of various kinds of books, journal articles and theses.Lin Yutang is a renowned writer and translator in Chinese and Western societies, but in view of the limited accumulation of the author’s knowledge, this paper only is a case study on Lin Yutang as a translator. Based on the predecessors’ maturing researches on Lin Yutang, this paper tries to start from his translation theory, culture, and translation strategies, to sort out and have a detailed research on Lin’s translation ideology and translating practice. Living abroad more than three decades, from Lin Yutang’s ideological transformation process point of view, his concept of culture can be defined as a "fusion concept" or "a bundle of contradictions", according to which the trace of his selection on the seemingly conflicting cultural outlooks--self-orientalism and attachment to the Eastern culture could be seen clearly. Self-Orientalism is a concept derived and extended out on the basis of Orientalism, mainly refers that the scholars with Oriental culture identity used oriental cognitive model to look closely at and write about the eastern world through the perspective of Westerners, positioned himself from differences between the Eastern and Western cultures and also gave self-description from his cross-cultural creations. In his ideological system, there still existed his lingering attachment to the Eastern culture. It can be said that in Lin Yutang’s whole life, he hovered on a combination of Eastern and Western cultures. In some sense, his Orientalism should be the alienation or variation of the last resort of his attachment to the Eastern cluture.As the entry point of this thesis, the analysis and research on Lin’s translation theory and practice started from his self-orientalism and attachment to the Eastern culture. Based on his own special experience and the background of the times, he wrote On Translation nearly10,000words, in which he multi-perspectively expounded his knowledge and attitude on translation theory. He argued that a translator should fulfill three requirements:(1) a complete understanding of the language and contents of the original text;(2) so good a command of the Chinese language that smooth and expressive texts can be written,(3) enough training on translation to hold proper opinions on the standards and techniques of translation. Simply speaking, a translator should have bilingual knowledge and professional training on translation. Among the translation theories at that time, Lin Yutang put linguistics and reader’s psychological factors into translation studies showed his original values and advanced consciousness in this field. He also raised his three criteria for translation, i.e. faithfulness, fluency and aesthetics, as well as his views on poetry translation, and further put forward three responsibilities, respectively the responsibility for the source text, for the target readership and for art. Lin’s greatness lies not only in his translation theory, but also in his translation practice. He translated a considerable number of ancient Chinese literary works, most of which were the ancient classics in line with Lin Yutang’s literary concept of spirituality, humor, and leisurely style. Through his flexible use of translation strategies, such as domestication, foreignization, amplification and adaptation, he correctly interpreted his own unique cultural outlook and translation theory.