A Study Of Zhangailing’s Compliance With Orientalism In Her Self-translated Works

Orientalism, systematically explored by Edward W. Said, marks the establishment ofPost-colonialism and acts as a Western discourse for dominating, restructuring, and havingauthority over the Orient. In the context of Post-colonialism, translation is no longer a simpleand pure transformation between two languages, but an effective tool of the culturalhegemony and is deeply marked with cultural imprints. And translators, as the subjects oftranslation activities, are inevitably swaged by various factors in the Post-colonialist context,thereby, manifesting their own cultural standpoints, translation purposes and personalsubjective biases and so on in their translation practices. For instance, under the influence ofthe Western mainstream ideology, poetics and the mode of discourse and thinking, sometranslators, with the Oriental cultural identity, tend to cater to Orientalism consciously orunconsciously, and then sink into a dilemma of Self-Orientalism.Self-translation is a special phenomenon and is a unique form of translation. It means theact of translating an original work into another language by the author himself or herself. Inthe context of Post-colonialism, self-translation faces the same problems embedded in thecommon translation activities, and is subject to various social and cultural factors, too. Inrecent years, Zhang Ailing·s translator·s identity and her unique self-translation have attractedthe widespread concerns of scholars. By tracing back to the results of previous studies relatedto Zhang Ailing, it is easy to find that Zhang Ailing·s self-translating practice can be dividedinto three stages, and that she employs a number of domesticating translation strategies suchas addition, deletion and rewriting in her self-translated works in the first two stages of herself-translation, which reflects her distinctive thinking and purposes about translation, as wellas her particular cultural standpoint. Thus, based on the theoretical framework of Said·sOrientalism, this thesis intends to carefully analyze and study Zhang Ailing·s two typicalEnglish versions in the first two stages of her self-translation: Naked Earth and Shame, Amah!so as to explore Zhang Ailing·s compliance with Orientalism as well as her cultural standpointin these two stages. At the same time, this thesis tries to take the ideological and poetologicaltheories as the starting points, to reveal the main reasons why Zhang Ailing caters to the Orientalist discourse pattern, and why she gets into the trouble of Self-Orientalism. Eventually,this thesis hopes to guide its readers to appreciate the unique author-translator Zhang Ailingcomprehensively, and to provide a new perspective for researching Zhang Ailing as well asher translation.In this thesis, there are seven chapters.The first chapter shows the background, problems, objectives, methodology andsignificance of this research.The second chapter traces the researching achievements made by previous scholars andtheir limitations in the aspects of Orientalism, Self-Orientalism as well as Zhang Ailing·stranslation, so as to highlight the necessity and importance of this study.The third chapter systematically introduces the theoretical frameworks of Orientalismand Self-Orientalism used in this thesis, and their relations with translation.The fourth chapter reviews Zhang Ailing·s extremely unusual life experiences and familybackground, and her achievements in writing and translation, which sets a solid foundationfor the following chapters.The fifth chapter points out that Zhang Ailing·s compliant attitude to Orientalism mainlylies in these two aspects: her selection of translation texts and her choices of translationstrategies, by detailedly exploring and analyzing the self-translated works Naked Earth andShame, Amah! as well as their original texts respectively.The sixth chapter reveals the causes of Zhang Ailing·s compliance with Orientalism fromthe perspectives ofAndre Lefevere·s theories of ideology and poetics.The seventh chapter summarizes the whole thesis and also points out that in thePost-colonialist context, translators should still adhere to the basic principles of translation,and responsibly act as cultural ambassadorsμ, hence promoting a real equal exchange ofcultures in the globe.