On The Translation Of Intertexts In The Colony Of Unrequited Dreams From Bakhtin’s Dialogism

Bakhtin emphasizes that two voices are the minimum for life and dialogicality is theessential property of human existence. As the core of his theories, dialogism starts from thedialogicality of texts to probe the dialogic nature of utterances. It attributes equal status tothe various subjects involved in the dialogues, namely the author, the reader, theprotagonist, the social ideologies and so on. In recent years, although studies of dialogismgradually prevail, the research of how to utilize it in translation is far from enough,especially the translation of some certain literary properties like intertext is even rare.Translation activity serves as the bridge connecting different cultures, which can bedefined as a cross-cultural dialogue and communication that relate to several subjects, suchas author, text, translator, reader, etc. Therefore, applying dialogism to translation researchis reasonable and appropriate. The author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, WayneJohnston, realizes the dialogues and fusion of multiple utterances, voices and genres bymasterly using intertextual technique. This thesis mainly discusses the embodiment ofdialogues in literary translation in view of the author, the translator, the translated text andthe target readers and then analyzes the intertexts in the novel, hoping to provide a newapproach for the future translation studies.Firstly, this research provides a brief summary of the existing literary translationtheories, mainly the X-oriented theories, and then introduces Bakhtin’s dialogism bycommenting the disadvantages of these former theories and dialogism’s advantages overthem. The following is a review of the existing literature in which dialogism is applied inthe study of translation, an analysis of the dialogic nature of literary translation and aconcise interpretation of the major form of dialogue, i.e. intertext referred in this study.Secondly, it introduces the source author, major plot and former relative researches on TheColony, after which a demonstration of the multiple dialogues between different subjects is put forward such as the dialogues between the translator and the source text/author, thetranslator and the target readers, the target text and the readers. Through analyzing thedialogues between the subjects in the translation of intertexts, this thesis adds weight to thedialogic nature of literary translation and demonstrates that because of the unfinalizabilityof dialogues, the target text is bound to change and evolve with time.