| Eileen Chang,one of the prominent personalities in 20thcentury Chinese literature,remains a discussion topic and object of study since the very beginning of her career.Internationally,studies around her and the translation of her works are particularly prosperous in the United States.This is not only thanks to the strong promotion of the sinologist C.T.Hsia,but also because Eileen Chang,living in this country during the second half of her life,was a bilingual writer who was capable to translate her works into English.In France,although beginning in 1958,the translation of Eileen Chang actually took off after the active participation of Emmanuelle Péchenart since the 1990s.As a translator of Chinese modern and contemporary literature,Emmanuelle Péchenart immersed herself in reading Eileen Chang's works in the late 1980s when the latter had just reappeared in publications in Chinese mainland.She devotes herself to the French translation of Eileen Chang since 1995;during the same period,she also conducted some correlative research.Currently,almost ninety percent of French translations of Eileen Chang's texts were finished by Péchenart,which take up the largest proportion of her Chinese literature translations;apart from translation,Péchenart never stops deepening and widening her studies on Eileen Chang and on the writer's works.As a result,she became a specialist of Eileen Chang in France.Therefore,this thesis proposes to explore Emmanuelle Péchenart's coutinuous participation in translating Eileen Chang,especially the principles and methods that she adopted and applied throughout her translation,as well as the reception of Eileen Chang's works in France,in which we discuss the role of translator-researcher that Emmanuelle Péchenart plays.This study consists of three chapters.The first chapter offers an overview of the French translation of Eileen Chang's texts before presenting Emmanuelle Péchenart in chronological order by focusing on her education background and her professional career before taking inventory of the Chinese literary works that she translated into French.By tracing the time when Péchenart decided to learn Chinese and finally took Eileen Chang's texts as the main objects of her translation and research,we discuss how her translation was influenced by her interdisciplinary perspective as well as the historical,social and cultural contexts in the 1970s to 1980s,illustrating in detail the texts written by the writer that Péchenart has chosen to translate over the past twenty years as well as her research findings on Eileen Chang which are embodied not only in all the paratexts that she wrote for her translations,but also in her thesis and other articles,reflecting the translator's thinking on theoretical questions of translation,her overall understanding of the intratextual and extratextual contexts and her detailed exploration of Chinese culture,which guarantee the quality of her translation.The second chapter,based on the inventory of translations in the previous chapter,is devoted to a case study on texts translated by Emmanuelle Péchenart and their original by taking the examples of Chenxiang xie-diyi luxiang and Qingcheng zhi lian,two of the author's representative works.The first analysis focuses on how the translator restored the style where elements of classical Chinese literature and that of Western literature are mixed,as well as on the way she handled cultural differences.We discover that the in-depth studies on Eileen Chang's writing and the grasp of historical,cultural and textual contexts led the translator to reproduce the original text's style by choosing the translating operation according to the context so as to make the translation as suitable as possible.The second analysis is based on a comparative study between the translation and the retranslation of the same novel.We note in the newly translated text that the imperfections in the first translation have been reduced,the understanding of the text has been updated as well,and the necessity of these operations is inherent in the temporality of any translation;meanwhile,the retranslated text shows a certain“flexibility”:the translator no longer follows strictly the order and the literal meaning of the original text,but makes effort to reach the balance between the original style and the translation's legibility.The last chapter deals with the dissemination and reception in France of Eileen Chang's works which have been divided into three phases according to their scope.The first goes from 1958 to 1995,where only one novel was translated into French.From 1995 to 2008,the increase of translations by Péchenart aroused more interest in Eileen Chang within academics.The third phase began in 2008 and lasts until now,period marked by film adaptation and media coverage which contributes to the emergence of various critiques,facilitating the dissemination of the writer's works.In France,the systematic publication of Eileen Chang's writings started late with a small audience.At the same time,Péchenart's work is gradually increasing the attention that academics and the public pay to Eileen Chang,motivating some researchers,media and publishing houses to participate in the promotion of the writer's works.As a translator-researcher,Péchenart is dedicated to translating Eileen Chang in such a way that she makes an important contribution to the dissemination of texts,to correlative research and to her cooperation with the publishing industry.Her work constitutes a significant practice of translating Chinese literature in France.In conclusion,Emmanuelle Péchenart offered to French readers the majority of Eileen Chang's representative works with her elegant translations.This process fully demonstrates that continuous translation,exchanges in academic circles and multilateral cooperation are of great significance to revive and persist the work of a writer in another culture,it constitutes therefore an enriching exercise in the translation and reception of Chinese literature in France. |
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