A Back-translation Study Of Chinese American Literature

Translation study has become a means of literary analysis since the emergence ofcultural turn of translation studies in the1970s. The concept of translation is defined nolonger as a pure conversion from language to language; it involves transmission of culture aswell. Representatives of cultural turn in translation studies, Itamar Even-Zohar, Gideon Touryand André Lefevere, have reckoned that translation should not be conducted in a vacuum andthey observe and study translation in set of culture. Cultural turn of translation studies takestarget language as its first concern, relating to translator’s subjectivity, and makes a newexploitation of translation studies.Asian American literature in which Chinese American branch is included has graduallyedged itself into the spot light of literature field in the American society with a compellingvitality in the1960s. Chinese American writers through their emigrated parents inherit oldChinese traditions in a natural way. With American growth and education background,Chinese American descendents vividly depict and creatively collage their own Chinese stories.However, as a literary kind bred in American society, the Chinese cultural elements in theseworks are not substantially authentic but recreation. Chinese American writers play incisivelytheir imagination that conforms to readers’ fancy, wining themselves an opportunity to entermainstream American society. The highly exotic descriptions have on the one hand satisfiedthe American English readers’ curiosity for the living state of Chinese Americans and for theso-called Chinese culture; on the other hand they have to some extent paved the way forChinese American writers to enter the society that is dominated by white culture.The study of Chinese American literature on the mainland China can be traced back to1980s. A great number of Chinese American literary works were consecutively brought intomainland China from the year1998to the year2004and many were published in Chinese.Chinese American writers tend to directly employ Chinese cultural elements whether they areauthentic or not in their writings to serve their own needs. A great number of Chinese culturalelements like folktales,“translated” Chinese and conventional Chinese sayings are used inChinese American literary works. As a result, when they are translated into Chinese itinvolves a matter of back-translation. Due to its particular relevance with Chinese culture, translation of Chinese American literature differs from that of other foreign literary works.Contemporary literary theorist and culture critic Gayatri C. Spivak advocates a completesurrender and being the most intimate reader to the translated text, meanwhile the translatormust take a detailed investigation about the source language and the culture context of theauthor, thus to further understand the source text. Translation is not a transfer of piles ofmeanings but a process of dissemination and construction that affected by power and politics.In order to achieve a real translation, translators must restore the logic as well as rhetoricalsilence of the source text and show a full respect for it.This thesis employs Spivak’s translation theory as the basic framework to make ananalysis of back-translation of Chinese cultural elements in Chinese version of The WomanWarrior. In addition, the thesis also probes into the role translator plays in the process ofback-translation. With a close examination, the author of the thesis found that translators havemainly adopted a foreignization method in terms of translation of the source text and respectthe source text to the full. But as for the representation of Chinese cultural elements in thework, the translators place domestication method as the leader role. Although this approachhas made a dent in the strangeness for foreign literature and won the translation a largenumber of target readers, it has, however, to some degree erased language peculiarity of thesource text and deviated from the writing intention of original author. Besides, the translatorshave randomly added annotations as well as commentaries in translation, which makes thetarget readers confused and can not get what is said. The author of the thesis suggests thattranslators should forsaken the stylized translation concept of either one or the other, theyshould apply traditional translation methods in a reasonable way and in the meantime exert allefforts to retain unique characteristics of the source language and culture so as to achieve anequal conversation between two different cultures.The present study tries to investigate back-translation of Chinese American literatureunder a new framework and hopes to provide a new perspective for translation study ofChinese American literary works.