A Contrastive Study On Two Back Translations Of The Woman Warrior From The Perspective Of Context

The Woman Warrior is a literary work about China written by the Chinese American writer Maxine Hong Kingston in English.Hardly had the book been published in 1976 when it became well-received among the American community as one of the best sellers.In the novel,there are many Chinese cultural stories and historical allusions rewritten and adapted,which satisfied the curiosity of Americans at that time and provided the western people an access to the Chinese culture.The translation of the adapted traditional Chinese cultural stories and historical allusions into Chinese falls into the category of cultural back translation.This study will probe into such a phenomenon of translation in two back-translated versions of The Woman Warrior and their different translation methods used as well as their causes behind in a contrastive approach from the perspective of context under systematic functional linguistics so as to produce the accurate restoration of cultural elements in terms of language and culture,promoting the self-examination and understanding of Chinese culture and image and the in-depth exchange between Chinese and Western literature and culture and the mutual learning of Eastern and Western civilizations.Considering the complexity of the context in cultural back translation,the author proposes a model of contextual analysis on cultural back translation,which is based on the general framework of context proposed by Hu Zhuanglin and on the specified situational context or register advanced by M.A.K.Halliday.Under this combined model,context is divided into three sub-categories,that is,linguistic context,situational context,and cultural context.Linguistic context refers to the internal environment of the discourse,that is,the environment of language itself.Situational context refers to the surrounding situation where the text is produced,the nature of the event,the relationship of the participants,the time,the place,and the way of event,etc.,which is almost equal to register as defined by Halliday.That is,the three variables of field,tenor and mode function and determine meanings in the situational context.Cultural context is related to the socio-historical environment of culture and folk customs shared by a group of people who speak the same language.This thesis conducts a contrastive study on the two back translations of The Woman Warrior under such a contextual model.From the contrastive analysis of the two back translations of The Women Warrior,it can be seen that Li Jianbo and Lu Chengyi's version focuses on the linguistic context of the original text and conveys the information of the original fiction more faithfully.However,some of the terms and stories unique to Chinese culture have not been accurately translated due to the lack of situational context and cultural context in their version,which makes Chinese readers feel a sense of strangeness or even at a loss.In contrast,Wang Aiyan's version,with more domestication and thick translation strategies applied,puts more emphasis on the Chinese cultural context and readers' acceptance.Moreover,footnotes are also used to give an all-round cultural back translation of Chinese cultural legends and historical allusions,which meets the expectations of Chinese readers at modern times on the whole.This research also concludes that context can serve as an important perspective to better understand,interpret and translate Chinese American literary texts from.It is found that cultural back translation studies on literature written by overseas Chinese from the perspective of context,or the linguistic,situational and cultural context,to be exact,is conducive to the accurate representation of Chinese cultural elements,and to the illustration of the target cultural influence on the production of the back-translated text,thus providing better guidance for the translation of English literature authored by overseas Chinese back into Chinese.And two illuminations are as follows.On the one hand,in terms of the role of context in cultural back translation,the translator should consider both the context of the original language and that of the target language,and he should also have a panoramic understanding of the source text and make a detailed analysis of it before he tries to produce an accurate back-translation of Chinese American literary works.On the other hand,as Chinese translators live in the Chinese context,they are more familiar with the Chinese cultural elements and cultural context involved in the literature written by overseas Chinese.They should try to achieve accurate back translation of the Chinese cultural elements and cultural contexts with their own Chinese cultural knowledge and literature query tools.However,it is worth mentioning that the translator should not manipulate and rewrite the original text and its context at their will in the name of cultural back translation.The back translator,apart from equipping himself with a good command of the Chinese and English language,rich encyclopedic knowledge and multicultural awareness,should take into account such situational contextual factors as the author's writing techniques and intention without excessive intervention.As for the cultural elements in the original text that are different in the Chinese culture,he should not go too far so as to domesticate them,as they might add a novel experience to the Chinese readers and also serve as a way to promote the exchange and interaction between the two languages and cultures.