On Lin Shu’s Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu In The Postcolonial Perspective Of Hybridity

The development of postcolonial and hybrid theories opened up a new research fieldfor translation studies. According to the postcolonial theory, the political and economicinequality between different countries will inevitably lead to cultural inequality.Translation is the product of the exchanges between two languages and cultures. Thepower differentials between two cultures contribute to the hybrid characteristics in thetranslated text. From the postcolonial perspective, appropriate hybridity in translated textfrom strong culture to weak one would help to provide a way of the survival for the weakculture and resist against cultural hegemony of the strong culture.This thesis takes Lin Shu’s Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu as a case study to analyze the hybridphenomena in the translated text at linguistic, cultural and literary levels from thepostcolonial perspective of hybridity under the particular background in late Qing Dynastyof China. The author points out Lin Shu adopted the domestication-oriented andforeignization-assisted translation strategies in the translation process which brings aboutthe low degree of hybridity of the translated text. In linguistic aspect, classical Chinese,Chinese lexicons and syntaxes in early Qin period and archaic four-character orsix-character phrases were frequently used by Lin Shu. Meanwhile, some foreigners’names, some foreign places’ names and some new cultural-loaded terms were also broughtin by Lin Shu. In cultural aspect, Lin Shu attached great importance to traditional ChineseConfucian Ethics and transferred English cultural images into Chinese ones in thetranslated text. When dealing with the Christian content in the original, he chose topreserve, delete and adapt the content about Christianity. In literary aspect, sticking to theChinese traditional literary conventions, Lin Shu simplified the environment, psychologyand appearance description and reserved some part in portraying major characters.Moreover, the original third person narrative perspective, the chronological and flashbacknarrative orders and the narrative form of letter were all kept in Lin’ s translated text. Heboldly gave up the traditional form of Chinese novels—Zhanghui Style in his translation.The above-mentioned analysis shows that Lin Shu’s Hei Nu Yu Tian Lu embodies obvioushybrid characteristics which contribute to propagate Western advanced ideas and cultures,promote Chinese traditional culture, and resist against Western hegemonic culture byretaining the appropriate readability for Chinese readers.The research in this thesis gives some inspirations for E-C literary translation practice. Under the background of cultural globalization, cultural exchanges among differentcountries will keep increasing. Because Chinese people want to know more about Westerncultures, the market of E-C literary translation works will also be enlarged. Owing to theexistence of cultural differentials, the hybridity of translated texts will become a universalphenomenon. In the practice of E-C literary translation the translator inclines to keep someheterogeneous elements from Western cultures to transplant new blood for Chinese culture.Meanwhile, the translator is also expected to keep a certain degree of hybridity, that is tosay, too many foreign components from Western cultures may threaten the survival ofChinese traditional culture. Therefore, in order to flourish Chinese culture, the translatorsare supposed to keep the advantages of Chinese traditional culture and absorb the strongpoints from foreign cultures.