Study Of Amplification And Omission In Eileen Chang's Chinese-English Self-Translation: A Postcolonial Perspective

With postcolonialism applied to translation studies, there appeared"postcolonial turn"in translation studies, as a result more and more scholars approach translation from post colonial perspective. Scholars begin to cast their eyes on external factors that manipulate translation, such as social, political economical and ideological factors. Postcolonial theorists consider translation as a channel of colonization, just as Niranjana has said"translation as a practice shapes, and take shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism". Imbalanced political and economical development resulted in status gap and asymmetrical power relationships between different cultures. Translation and power coexist, therefore the choice of source texts and translation strategies reflect the relationship between discourse and power and in turn help to construct power. Translators are succumbed to some powers and their translation serves for the construction of power involved. Eileen Chang was a legendary writer in Chinese literature history in 20th century. In recent years, the research on Eileen Chang is very hot whereas the research on her translation, especially on her self-translation is limited. This thesis, taking two of Eileen Chang's Chinese-English self-translated works as examples, tries to reveal the correlation between the asymmetrical power relationships and employment of amplification and omission. All together there are eight chapters.The first chapter introduces the research background, research objective and research significance.The second chapter is literature review which includes review of postcolonial theory, study on amplification and omission, past research on Eileen Chang and Eileen Chang's translation.The third chapter focuses on the theoretical foundation, including postcolonial translation theory of Douglas Robinson, Foucault's theory on Power-discourse and Said's Orientalism.The forth chapter is about the research design. Research questions, research method and the collection of data are introduced.The fifth, sixth and seventh chapters are the main part of the research.The fifth chapter analyzes the amplification and omission across power differentials. Employment of amplification and omission in two novels are analyzed from four aspects: description of human image, setting, psychology and imagery which are vital factors in fiction creation and shining ponits in Eileen Chang's fiction creation. The conclusion is that Eileen Chang employed amplification and omission targetedly in two novels while translating and the translated works showed strong color of Orientalism.The sixth chapter discusses the reasons why the author-translator adopted amplification and omission. Siting Eileen Chang's self-translation in historical context to which she belongs, the author finds that the asymmetrical power relationships between western and eastern cultures, between patronage and translator and between western readers and eastern translator contribute to her choice.The seventh chapter analyzes the construction effect that employment of amplification and omission has on the asymmetrical power relationships from four aspects of critical discourse analysis: classification system, transitivity system, modality system and transformation system. The conclusion is that the author-translator's adoption of amplification and omission serves for the construction of asymmetrical power relationships, which has negative influence on cultural communication based upon equality between the west and the east. The eighth chapter is the conclusions and limitations of the research.