On Cultural Back-translation From A Cultural Memory Perspective

As a special translation phenomenon,cultural back-translation aims at translating works,depicting Culture B in Language A,into Language B and bringing them back to Culture B.Chinese culture,symbols and memory prevail in foreign writings.With the in-depth investigation of cultural back-translation,translation studies have showed some new trends,of which the most important one is the attention paid to memory.Take Beijing as an example.English works on it written by Westerners have recorded another kind of city memory.How can cultural memory written in English be reproduced in translation?How does Chinese culture written by Westerners regenerate and reconstruct memory through cultural back-translation?How can Chinese image be reconstructed in translation?To answer these questions,the author selects and translates the first three chapters of Peking:A Historical and Intimate Description of Its Chief Places of Interest.Through case studies,the author firstly identifies difficulties in cultural back-translation,including memory conflicts and cultural differences.Then,the author proposes specific strategies of cultural back-translation,including complete and incomplete cultural back-translation.The former refers to intertextual translation resorting to texts and pictures as carriers of cultural memory,and the latter the use of addition to deal with memory conflicts and cultural differences in the original works.The author finally illustrates the effects of cultural back-translation,the regeneration and reconstruction of memory and national image.The paper will provide some inspiration for cultural back-translation studies,and also be conducive to cross-cultural communication and doing well in telling Chinese stories.