Fusion Of Horizons Between Translator And Original Writer Under The Manipulation Of Western Centralism

Fusang is a representative work written by a famous new immigrant writer,Yan Geling.It demonstrates the early immigration experience and the conflict between Chinese and Western cultures,and occupies a significant position in the history of the Chinese diaspora literature in North America.Fusang is a novel about the love-hate entanglement between a trafficked prostitute,Fusang,a white teenager,Chris and a bully hero,Da Yong.The Lost Daughter of Happiness,the English version of Fusang,became one of the annual top ten best-sellers of Los Angeles Times in 2001.At present,scholars at home and abroad are studying The Lost Daughter of Happiness mainly from the perspectives of post-colonialism,culture filtering and rewriting theory,etc.But few studies on it have been conducted with fusion of horizon as the entry point.This thesis consists of four chapters.The first chapter introduces the relevant theory.The second chapter mainly discusses why Westerners always believe that they need to rescue exotic oriental women and ugly and indifferent coolies and how the translator,as a white sinologist,has faithfully translated the Chinese image in keeping with the cognition of western centralism in order to cater to the original writer's horizon of expectations,and thus reaches full-fusion with his/her horizon.The third chapter probes into the fact that in the source text,the original writer mainly describes Fusang's virtues,namely,“counterattack with endurance”,“forgiveness”,“maternity”,etc.but the translator,as a sinologist who advocates respecting others' culture,resists the western centralism to retain some virtues and delete some,which reflects a sense of ambivalence,and at the same time,confronts with the original writer's horizon of expectations,and thus she only reaches partial-fusion with the original writer's horizon,and this may eventually lead to different opinions on Fusang between the readers of the source text and those of the target text.The fourth chapter elaborates how the translator subverts the original writer's horizon of expectations,and that she abandons the cultural connotation of the title and deletes Fusang's female Buddha image.Though this may be related to the commercial purpose of the publisher of the English version and the implied reader's acceptability estimated by the translator,but it diverges from the cultural connotation conveyed by the original writer,which discords with the original writer's horizon,and is so-called zero-fusion.This way of translation is bad for the transmission of Chinese culture.This thesis analyzes the situation of fusion of horizon between the translator Cathy Silber and the original writer Yan Geling in The Lost Daughter of Happiness under the manipulation of western centralism.In the process of the study,the author finds that the translator's aesthetic ideology will affect whether or not his horizon of expectations is fused with that of the original writer and its degree,which ultimately affects his/her choices of translation strategies.Although the translation is popularly received in the United States,this is based on the distortion and transformation of the Chinese culture,which leads to the loss of the meaning and spirit of Chinese culture to a great extent.All the changes on the connotation of the source text in The Lost Daughter of Happiness are due to the fact that under the manipulation of the western centralism,the translator,intentionally or not,rewrites the source text one way of another to meet the target readers' horizon of expectations.On the account,this thesis proposes that,in the process of translation,the translator should operate,trying to avoid the negative influence of the subjective horizon of expectations on the translation based on the equal cultural communication between China and the west.Therefore,the application of fusion of horizon has certain positive enlightenment for the research on the translation of literary works.