Translation Strategies Of Chinese Culture Export From Postcolonical Perspective

Recently, postcolonial studies are just unfolding as a fresh and hot topic in the academic field. By uncovering the truth of imperial cultural hegemony to the Third World, postcolonial studies try to promote the research of poly-cultures and develop a new form of cultural relationship between the West and the East from resistance to dialogue so as to dispel the "Authority" or "Center".Postcolonial translation studies, born in the 1980s, are the application of this theory into the translation field. By examining translation activities in various historical conditions and exposing the power differential hidden behind the displacement of texts, postcolonial translation theorists argue that translation has been used negatively by Western countries to seek cultural hegemony as well as to establish and perpetuate the asymmetric and unequal relations between the "strong cultures" and "weak cultures". Based on this situation, a lot of heated debates have been raised by the postcolonial translation theorists as for which translation strategy to choose, domestication or foreignization. The famous postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha firstly introduced the concept of "hybrid" into the postcolonial research. In the postcolonial context, hybridity provides a promising way in which the binary opposition between the hegemonic countries and the dominated countries can be destructed and in which the peripheral cultures can break away from the control or suppression of the hegemonic cultures.Based on the postcolonial translation theory, and through case analysis, this thesis carefully discusses the translation strategies adopted by Lin Yutang in his translation of Shen Fu's Fu Shen Liu Ji, and focuses on the preservation of Chinese national culture in the source text and the optimization of the target text. Through case analysis, this thesis attempts to prove that "hybridity" in translation is inevitable as a result of the cultural difference between the source language and target language, and that compared to domesticated translation and foreignized translation, "hybridity" is a better way to export "weak cultures" under the postcolonial context, thus help to promote the world cultural exchange and resist cultural hegemony. The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction to the theoretical foundation of the research, i.e. the postcolonial theory and postcolonial translation theory; it probes into translation strategies from postcolonial perspective as well as the urgent situation of exporting Chinese culture and then makes a brief introduction to Shen Fu and his work Fu Shen Liu Ji as well as its translation by Lin Yutang to be studied in the thesis. The second, the third and the fourth chapters are the main body of the thesis and aims to explore the effects produced by Lin's translation strategies with regard to the export of Chinese culture. The second chapter discusses the translation strategies concerning mental culture, and discusses the domestication and foreignization in Lin's translation about appellation and religions. The third chapter discusses Lin's translation strategies concerning material culture, and analyzes how Lin chose between domestication and foreignization in handling the cultural terms from the aspects of clothing, food, and housing. The forth chapter explores the Lin's translation strategies about institutional culture, and analyzes how Lin coped with measuring terms and customs terms by selecting between domesticated translation and foreignized translation. The fifth chapter presents the conclusion of the thesis which includes research findings as well as limitations.