| A decade after translation studies saw its official establishment as an independent discipline with James Holmes' "The Name and Nature of Translation Studies" in 1972, it witnessed much unexpected development in itself. Among all these surprises in the field of translation studies is a new cultural school: postcolonial translation studies.Integrated mostly by postcolonial studies and translation studies, postcolonial translation studies did not emerge as a translation school until late 1980s but has developed with quite a momentum ever since.Like other cultural schools, postcolonial translation studies pays its attention to cultural and ex-textual factors, examining how they have affected the production of translation. As indicated by its own name, postcolonial translation studies has its focus on the relationship between postcolonial cultures and translation studies, which, to be more clear, is to study the unbalanced power relations between former colonies and their ex-colonizers, negative influence of such relations on the once-colonized languages and cultures, which can be shown in the translation activity between the powerful and the powerless, and the way the powerless try to challenge such unbalanced power relations through translation.This thesis tries to present postcolonial translation studies in a systematic and comprehensive way, tracing back in time to explore the historical and theoretical roots of this cultural translation school, explaining how it has developed in both theory and practice, and not forgetting to provide criticisms it has received from translation scholars of other schools. To make all these aspects clear, the writer approaches the topic in six steps, as explained in the following:In Introduction, the writer briefly goes through the history of translation study and how postcolonial translation studies, appearing in the late 1980s as a cultural translation school, is different from linguistic translation schools. Many translation scholars share some of or all of their attention to it, but they mostly focus on certain issues instead of showing a comprehensive picture of postcolonial translation studies. And that is the reason why the writer wants to make her best efforts to present a comparatively comprehensive picture for this cultural translation school.In chapter one, the writer provides an introduction to the theoretical source of postcolonial translation studies—postcolonialism, by exploring three major aspects involved, that is, the development of postcolonialism, its central issues for concern (such as the idea of Eurocentrism), and some major theorists (like Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak). Before this chapter ends itself, it spends some time and space explaining the influence of postcolonialism on translation studies and forecasting the combination of the two, which serves as a precondition for the whole thesis.In chapter two, the writer first examines how postcolonial translation studies has developed as a translation school in a chronological order, through the efforts of anthropologists, postcolonial theorists, and translation theorists respectively; and then presents some issues of common concern to show readers the common core of this school despite its great diversity in theoretical development.In chapter three, the writer moves on from theory to practice of postcolonial translation studies by presenting three sub-schools, that is, Cannibalism in Brazil, writing translation practice in multilingual India, and the border writing practice in Quebec. All these three, along with other postcolonial translation practices, showing strong national colors and presenting no one else but themselves, have caught much attention from translation theorists and practitioners both inside and outside the postcolonial school.In chapter four, the writer provides some of the criticisms postcolonial translation studies has received in its theory and practice. As to some of these criticisms, the writer voices her personal opinions, but she does not want to interrupt or influence the readers' interpretation in any way.In Conclusion, the writer summarized some major characteristics of postcolonial translation studies as the final words for what have been discussed about in previous chapters. But that is not the way to end the thesis, because the writer goes further to pull China into the postcolonial translation discourse, hoping that China can follow suit of Brazil and India in developing its own translation theory and strategy that can best reflect its past and present. |
