A Comparative Study On The Two Chinese Versions Of My Country And My People: An Intertextual Perspective

Lin Yutang, a world-renowned Chinese writer, was proficient in both Chinese and western culture. His masterpiece My Country and My People, which was written in the English language, is a very important publication served as a systematic introduction of China and Chinese culture to the West by Lin and even the Chinese writers of the day. The book has been very influential among Western readers, and won quite a reputation for Lin Yutang. The value of the two Chinese translations of My Country and My People selected in this study lies in that Hao Zhidong&Shen Yihong’s version has been very popular among the contemporary TL readers and Zheng Tuo’s version is extremely rare in the book market and there is quite a time span between the two translations.Intertextuality was first brought about as a text theory by a French semiotieian Julia Kristeva in the1960s, the basic idea being that any kind of text takes shape on the basis of the traces or memories of previous texts, or in the process of absorbing and transforming from other texts. Translation activity itself enjoys very distinctive features of intertextuality.This paper sets about from the theoretical source of intertextuality, tries to introduce intertextuality into translation practice, and mainly analyzes the intertextual phenomena in My country and My People and the different processing of them in its two Chinese translations from the perspective of "manifest intertextuality" and "constitutive intertextuality" under the framework of Norman Fairclough’s theory, briefly discusses the intertextuality of the source text and in the receptors’context, and attempts to contribute to the research of different translations of My Country and My People from the perspective of intertextuality.By integrating Fairclough’s typology of manifest and constitutive intertextuality and Hatim&Mason’s classification of intertextual references, this paper carries out a comparative analysis between the two translations as to how they deal with the intertextual references of the ST and how the process of translation reflects its intertextual nature, and has several major findings: Firstly, in dealing with the intertextual references of the ST, Hao&Shen’s version is more intertextual in the sense of both text and reader’s response, while Zheng’s omission and amplification display many mistakes despite its endeavor to produce an intertextual translation of the ST.Secondly, as to the expression of the two translations, Hao&Shen’s version uses modern Chinese that is popular and easy to understand; Zheng’s version mixes the use of both ancient and vernacular Chinese, and regularly maintains the sentence pattern of the English language, which sounds awkward and lengthy and sometimes could create misunderstandings for the TT readers.Thirdly, both versions not only have their respective sparkling points, but also have made obvious mistakes, which infer that a successful intertextual translation calls for the translator’s erudition and preciseness.In conclusion, the translator should give full play to his/her subjectivity in locating the intertextual reference in the ST, linking it with his/her knowledge and tracing it in the pre-texts and other relevant texts, and producing a target text which shares similar intertextual relations with the TT readers as those with the ST readers.