Cultural Translation And Rewrite

Laura M. White, a female missionary from America, wasdispatched by the Methodist Episcopal Church to China in1887. At first,she preached in Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas. Several years later, she setup Huiwen Ladies’s College in Nanjing in1908, and was the Principal ofthat college. Afterwards she was invited by Timothy Richard, theDirector-General of The Christian Literature Society for China, toserve as the chief editor of Nvduo, a female newspaper. She worked inChina until1931when she went back to America. During those yearsshe have translated many foreign literary to Chinese.Although, her contribution has been concerned by the academicworld, as a missionary, Laura M. White had been worked in China for43years, dedicated all her life to women’s education and Culture. Shehad ever worked as a teacher, an editor, a translator, a writer and soon. Actually, She not only preached Christian in China but alsotranslated many foreign literary and brought western culture andcustoms to Chinese. She had made outstanding contributions toSino—Western cultural exchanging. Eighteen works translated by shehave been found out. But it is a pity that only three or four works hasbeen paid attention in academic world. I have searched Laura M.White’s translated literary and other materials from Shanghai Libraryand Shanghai Archives, and find that the themes of the works focus onthe following three subjects: Christian, female and children. In otherwords, these three subjects are the main emphasis of her work in China.Translation is using another language to express the content of onelanguage, but language is the outer surface, the real aim is cultureexchanging. The method of traditional translation study is contrastingthe same text in different languages, more limited to language itself. Inthis giplloma work the angle of view is culture translation, cover a wide fields from translator’s ideology how to choose the texts, how to dealwith the texts when facing the differences of Sion-Western culture, therelationship between translated texts and source language countries,specially the influence of the sourse texts, the interaction of cooperators,the way how Laura M. White made her selection. In a word, from thetexts themselves and back to the translation strategies, this article try toexplore the effects of social and cultural factors outside the texts.Through an analysis upon the texts and related materials, itappeared that Laura M. White’s translation is affected by Chinesenative culture. At the late19th and early20th, the prosperity oftranslation, high needs of western knowledge, discovery of female andchildren, all of the above affect the texts she had chosen. As a femalemissionary from a western country, Laura M. White brought new imagesand ideals about female and children through the works she translated.She always emphasized belief in God in texts, due to the influence ofideology as a missionary. However, considering the ability of theacception and aesthetic of Chinese readers, she had to take Chineseliterary modes into account. All of the above completely havereflected that a foreign missionarys selection when she confronted withthe conflicts between two kinds of different cultures.