The Influence Of Translator’s Hybrid Cultural Identity On Cultural Translation In The Travels Of Lao Can

The classic serial novel The Travels of Lao Can was written by Liu E in the late Qing Dynasty. Through describing the experiences of the charlatan named Lao Can during his travelling and medicine practicing around the country, the novel revealed the decadency of Qing government and expressed the author’s strong desire to redeem the country and his countrymen. Therefore, it was regarded as the representative work of the four rebuking novels in the late Qing Dynasty. The Travels of Lao Can, highly praised for its profound motifs and great artistic techniques, was one of the earliest Chinese classical fictions translated into English. The most popular English versions were translated by the famous Chinese translator Yang Xianyi and the English sinologist Harold Shadick. There are abundant words and allusions with rich cultural connotations in the novel, so translators need to deal with the cultural factors properly in order to better deliver the Chinese culture contained in the novel to the foreign readers.Since the 1970s, a tide of cultural studies has emerged in the international translation academic circle, which is referred to "cultural turn" in the field of translation. Translation researchers no longer treat translation as a simple transformation between languages. Instead, they start to examine translation in a broader cultural level. They hold the view that translation, especially literary translation, is not simply a technical switching between two languages, but also an in-depth cultural exchange. As a significant approach of inter-cultural communication, translation is definitely influenced by various cultural factors. With the further study of "cultural turn" in the field of translation, the translator, who serves as the subject of translation practice and cultural transmission, has gradually entered the vision of the translation researchers. As a result, the translator’s cultural identity becomes one of the hot issues in the field of translation theoretical researches.Homi Bhabha, one of the leading figures of postcolonial translation study, puts forward the concept of hybridity in the postcolonial context and combines its study with the concept of cultural identity. Bhabha elaborates on the correlations between hybridity and cultural identity as well as the formation of hybrid cultural identity. The concept of hybrid cultural identity enriches and supplements the theory of cultural identity, providing a new dimension for the study of translator’s subjectivity in cultural translation. Both of the two translators of The Travels of Lao Can, Yang Xianyi and Harold Shadick, have a hybrid cultural identity. In Yang’s hybrid cultural identity, the eastern cultural identity takes the major part and the western cultural identity constitutes the minor part. Shadick is just on the contrary. After a review of the current English translation study of The Travels of Lao Can, it is found that none of them has adopted the perspective of hybrid cultural identity to make a comparative study on two different English versions and their translators. Therefore, the thesis intends to take this perspective to analyze the hybrid cultural identity of Yang Xianyi and Harold Shadick, comparing their respective translation of the cultural elements and discussing the potential influence their hybrid cultural identities exert on their translated text. The cultural identities of the two translators of The Travels of Lao Can and their translation are rather typical. It is sincerely hoped that this study, which is viewed from the translator’s hybrid cultural identity, could provide some references and thoughts for the further comparative translation study of Chinese classic fictions.