Cultural Otherness Study From Postcolonial Translation Context

As a key term in postcolonial context,cultural otherness is an oriental culture image squeezed out from occidental hegemony culture,which is the reflection of cultural imperialism and cultural hegemony.It is so called cultural otherness neglected by people that plays an important part in cross-cultural exchange.In the postcolonial context,cultural otherness is biased to be exploited to construct dominant cultural identity of the occidental hegemonic culture.With the progress of the cultural globalization,heterogenous culture is facing a crisis of homogeneity.In the postcolonial translation context,hegemonic culture and weak culture are subject to asymmetric description and interpretation,from which cultural hegemony derives to confine cultural otherness.In this research,from the departure of culture hegemony,an exploration is made into the status quo of cultural otherness dominated by occidental culture,based on the analysis of “Occidentalism” and “Orientalism”,it has been found that the weak oriental culture is depicted as dictatorial,backward,naive,and feminine for the purpose of the satisfaction of the proponents' expectations for cultural hegemony.Through the cultural and political manipulation,cultural hegemonists implicitly implanted their value,life style,social customs and cultural model into other weak cultures in order to weaken and even wipe off the linguistics and cultural features of the other cultures,and rewrite,misappropriate and distort the cultural otherness.Then,a further probe is made into the representations of cultural otherness,its situation and its verbal manifestations from the postcolonial translation perspective.Cultural otherness is defined as anything that differs from the hegemonic culture.Although it may produce a weak multilingual voice,cultural otherness still exists out of political vision and beyond public concern.Cultural otherness is overwhelmed as inferior to dominant culture,taken as a mirror to reflect the recognition and confirmation of occidental cultural identity and marginalized due to its aphasia.Full use is made of the rich exemplification based on the English versions of the Chinese novels A Dream of Red Mansions translated by Hawkes and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio translated by Giles to have confirmed the problems concerning cultural otherness loss in the postcolonial translation context,it is the distortion and negative writing of cultural otherness in postcolonial translation,the uglification of Chinese cultural images in Giles' s cultural hegemony vision,the cultural centralism and cultural narcissism of the Occidentalism to reject the voice of cultural otherness.To respond and resist occidental cultural imperialism and cultural hegemony and torealize the equal cultural exchange between occidental and oriental cultures,on the basis of the clarification of the problems,the thesis has proposed some corresponding redemptive strategies and remedies for the lost cultural otherness in postcolonial translation context.1)In translation,the translation has to actualized the cultural intersubjectivity through the equal dialogue between the dominant occidental culture and the weak oriental culture to eliminate the central-peripherial schema caused by logos-centralism.2)The translator should adopt an appropriate orientation strategy,other culture oriented strategy in the translation the weak other culture into dominant occidental culture.3)In translation,great importance should be attached to cultural otherness.4)Top priority has to be given to the features of other cultures.5)The enhancement of the interaction between cultures should be exerted to guarantee cultural otherness.Finally,through the analysis of cultural intertextuality,it has been suggested that cultural confidence has to be cultivated in terms of the weak culture.The weak culture should strive for its discourse right to resist cultural imperialism and cultural hegemony.