Pseudotranslation And Imagined Japan In An Artist Of The Floating World

Kazuo Ishiguro(1954-),winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017,left Japan for Britain with his parents at the age of five and settled there ever since,but his second novel,An Artist of the Floating World(1986),is an artful and emotional construct of his own ‘Japan'.This novel not only embodies his attachment to his root and his past,but also shows his skillful use of‘memory,imagination and speculation',so it is well worth in-depth studying from different perspectives.In An Artist of the Floating World,traces of pseduotranslation are evident.This thesis is intended to study the features of pseudotranslation inherent in this novel,its functions in constructing an imagined Japan and its role in refracting Ishiguro's notion of history as fabricable.Pseudotranslation,apart from being a linguistic feature,helps the writer with his literary construction,specifically,the construction of an imagined Japan in An Artist of the Floating World.This thesis maintains that pseudotranslation not only helps with the construct of an imagined Japan in the novel,but also exposes the author's view of history as being fabricable.This study then makes it possible to interpret in depth the relation between literary construction and language itself,at the same time offers a new perspective in interpreting related novels by immigrant writers represented by Ishiguro.This thesis adopts the approach of descriptive translation studies(DTS)to analyse those expressions that can be considered as pseudotranslations.Theory of memory in Paul Ricoeur's book,mainly Socrates' metaphor of wax tablet,is also used in the analysis.Chapter 1 focuses on Ishiguro's use of language in the novel,analysing the expressions in the novel that are characteristic of pseudotranslation,exploring the purposes of the choices made in the composition of this novel;Chapter 2,using both Paul Ricoeur's and Socrates' theory of memory,elaborates on the point that the choices made in pseudotranslation are actually the changes happening with the eikons(images)that leave tupos(traces)on readers' memory,which in the end constructs an imagined Japan in the novel;Chapter 3 is devoted to the relation of imagination and memory with Ishiguro's notion of history,analysing the author's view of history he shows in the composition of this novel,at the same time putting forward the conclusion that such a view on history is also shown in his writing with pseudotranslation;The conclusion of thisthesis reemphasizes the close link between pseudotranslation and imagination,memory,history,meanwhile suggests possible perspectives from which to conduct further studies in this field.