Cultural Selection In Pearl S. Buck’s English Version Of Shui Huzhuan

Shui Huzhuan is one of the four Chinese classical literature, it’s a chapter novel written in the Chinese ancient vernacular language. The Work fully exposed the feudal ruling class’ s decadency and brutality, revealed the sharp social contradictions at that time, and the harsh reality of “the forced rebelling of people”. It also successfully created many heroical characters such as Wu Song, Lin Chong, Lu Zhishen, Li Kui etc. Twist plots, vivid language and characters all present the pinnacle of ancient Chinese vernacular fiction, with it’s high artistic achievement it has a far-reaching impact on future generations. So far, there are four English versions of Shui Huzhuan, among the four, Pearl S. Buck’s and Sidney Shapiro’s versions are the two highly-accepted ones. Therefore, when citing and comparison is necessary in this article, the examples are all from these two versions. By comparing of citing examples from these two versions to reveal Pearl S. Buck and Shapiro’s different ways of treating the cultural factors in the original novel, thus uncover the efforts Pearl S. Buck made to preserve Chinese culture when translating Shui Huzhuan.Pearl S. Buck was not only the first woman in America who won Nobel Literature Price but also the first one in history who won a price by writing Chinese materials. She’s not just a writer but also a translator and social activist. She created 107 works in her whole life, including "novels, short stories, plays, biographies, autobiographies, translation(Chinese to English), children’s literature, essays, journalism, poetry etc.". President Nixon once said tha Pearl S. Buck was "the communication bridge which connected eastern and western culture". It took Pearl about five years to complete the English version of Shui Huzhuan, which she named All Men Are Brothers. The age that Pearl S. Buck translated Shui Huzhuan was in a period that western culture was in a completely dominating position and it’s culture was pouring into China, cultural communication between west and east was in a lopsided situation. However, Pearl S. Buck, as a translator, in order to preserve the culture aspects of Shui Huzhuan, ignored the “west to east” cultural trend but chose the “east to west” translation method, showing the defiance of the weak culture against the strong culture, which was brave and admirable. All in all, her choice of original work, the translation strategies she used, as well as her attitude towards culture are all closely related to the translator herself and affected by the translator’s bi-cultural identity. Besides, after the English version was done, not only the translator’s writing skill can affect it’s acceptance and spreading degree but also the cultural factors from the original book, they are vital too. This paper is divided into four parts, the first part introduces the background, significance, purpose and methods of this article, the other following three chapters talk about how translator’s subjectivity influence cultural selections, how cultural characters are showing through different content levels and how culture factors form the original work influence the spreading of Pearl’s translated version. The three main chapters are: the first chapter introduce Pearl S. Buck’s relation with Chinese fiction, and how she showing the defiance of the weak culture against the strong culture in the process of translating and her bi-cultural identity’s influence in choosing the original work and the translating strategy; From word level, sentence level and paragraph level the second chapter explains in detail about how Pearl S. Buck handle those cultural problems, and the inspiration of translation that we might learn form her deeds; From the reprinted condition, western academics and readers feedback comments, the third chapter talks about All Men Are Brothers’ spreading and acceptance in western countries and also about the original work’s cultural factors’ function in spreading. According to the discussing above, hoping that the importance of cultural factors can be realized in translation so that in nowadays Chinese classical woks translation area the translators can pay enough attention to the cultural part. By studying the acceptance and spreading situation of All Men Are Brother’s, to reveal the important part that cultural factors played in it and also Pearl S. Buck’s contribution in spreading Chinese culture and promote the cultural communication between east and west.