A Study On The Translation Of Fusang From The Postcolonial Perspective

With the application of postcolonial theories in translation studies and theappearance of “the postcolonial turn”, an increasing number of translation researchershave paid their attention to the new perspective in translation studies—the postcolonialperspective. Previous researches have always put their emphasis on the nativetranslators who are faithful to the source text so as to resist hegemony and bring foreigncultures into West, or sinologists who cannot break away from their own colonialthoughts and change the source texts a lot. Few researches have paid attention to thetranslator who loves and respects foreign cultures, declares to restore the essence offoreign cultures and eventually cannot break away from the colonial thoughts. CathySilber is such a translator.Fusang, authored by the famous Chinese writer Yan Geling, won the firstliterature prize of the17thTaiwan United Daily News. The translation of the book, TheLost Daughter of Happiness, was one of the annual top ten bestsellers of Los AngelesTimes in2001. Few scholars, however, have carried out researches on this book. Theprevious research merely concerns about its literary characters, few were conductedfrom the postcolonial perspective.With the application of the Postcolonial theory, this thesis, analyzing how thethree key terms:“Orientalism”,“ambivalence” and “hybridity” play a role in thetranslation of Fusang, aims to find out the reasons of the manipulation and translating ofthe translation of Fusang and then points out that the appeal for difference and diversityshould be heightened and the feasibility of the hybridized translation.