A Study Of Lin Yutang’S Self-translation Of Between Tears And Laushter From The Perspective Of Dialogism

As a well-known translator, linguist and bilingual writer in literary world, Lin Yutang writes and translates a number of popular works in his life. Between Tears and Laughter is created in English, then translated into Chinese, which gains great success at home and abroad. The thesis is intended to analyze Lin Yutang’s self-translation of Between Tears and Laughter from Bakhtin’s Dialogism to study his purpose of self-translation and the translation strategies and methods he adopts in the process of self-translation.Mikhail Bakhtin proposes that the nature of objects is dialogue, and the relationship between them isn’t opposite, but coexistent and complimentary. In the process of doing research on Construction of Subject and Aesthetics, he points out that there exist three elements in the intersubjective relationship of aesthetic activity—“surplus of seeing”, “outsideness” and “transgredience”. The thesis is intended to analyze Lin Yutang’s dialogue in his self-translation of Between Tears and Laughter with “surplus of seeing” and “outsideness”.Douglas Robinson applies Bakhtin’s Dialogism to translation study, and he insists that the nature of translation is dialogue, which is happened in author, translator and readers. So the translator needs to do two dialogues in the process of self-translation, the one is his dialogue with the original text, the other is with the target readers.What’s more, translation is a great cultural dialogue among different countries, including cultures, customs, social and political backgrounds, etc. Translation plays the role of a bridge, connecting different cultures and promoting the communication between them. China at that war time was closed and backward, for Lin Yutang, who lived in America, he knew the current affairs and political situation, here he exists as “other” for Chinese people, which is the so-called “outsideness”. The purpose of his self-translation of Between Tears and Laughter is introducing the western culture to Chinese masses, strengthening their understanding of the outside world, promoting traditional Chinese culture and arousing compatriots’ patriotism and fighting will. Based on this, the author intends to divide the thesis into five parts:In Introduction, significance and methods of the research and outline of the paper will be given.Chapter One is literature review. In this part, the author introduces some researches on translation in view of Dialogism, overview of Bakhtin’s Dialogism to translation, current state of self-translation at home and abroad.Chapter Two is theoretical foundation, mainly expounding Bakhtin’s Dialogism, the nature of translation, translator’s identity and subjectivity in self-translation, as well as the relationship between Dialogism and Self-translation by selection of original text, translation strategies and translation methods.Chapter Three is the most important part of the whole paper. In this part, the author intends to analyze translation strategies and translation methods in specific examples with Bakhtin’s Dialogism.In Conclusion, the author will summarize the research value and main findings. Limitations and suggestions will be provided for further study as well.