Translator's Subjectivity:A Study On Eileen Chang's Self-translation Of The Golden Cangue

Eileen Chang,one of the important writers in the history of Chinese modern literature,was capable of bilingual writing and translation.Because of brilliant performance in English and Chinese and profound cultural deposits,she translated different forms of literature like novel,poem and prose.In recent years,scholars have paid attention to her translations,including self-translations and translations of other writer's works.However,contrast to much attention to her Chinese literature creations,scholars have paid little attention to her translation achievements.Jinsuo Ji earned Chang huge reputation in China.When Chang tried to make herself a name in the English-speaking world,she was eager to obtain acknowledgements by the way of self-translating a Chinese story.Self-translating Jinsuo Ji was her best choice.Chang devoted much to the translation of Jinsuo Ji,which she even self-translated and adapted for four times to get a satisfactory one.With the development of translation studies,scholars' focus has begun moving from language to other elements concerning translation.The "cultural turn" has led the scholars to the role of translator during the process of translation.From the perspective of translator's subjectivity,this paper tries to probe Eileen Chang's self-translation by taking Jinsuo Ji and its self-translation text The Golden Cangue as the case in point.By means of text analysis,it has discussed and analyzed how Chang's subjectivity exerts in terms of translation strategies,aesthetic implications and readers' reception,also explored the failure causes and influencing factors.Compared with translator who translated other writer's works,in the course of self-translation Eileen Chang was equipped with more freedom to interpret the original text and proceed necessary adaptations to the translated versions though she was affected by some external factors such as the sponsors.She played an active role in source text selection and translation strategies because of her strong audience awareness.However,as a self-translator,her subjectivity also got constrained by objective factors like target culture and original text and others.Apart from the influence of social context,Chang's literal translation method was another important factor that caused The Golden Cangue failure.It showed that as a coordinator,translator should reasonably take advantage of translator's subjectivity,so that the translated text could deliver the aesthetic arts of Chinese culture.Meanwhile,the translated text could be acknowledged by western culture and target readers.Thus,in the course of dialoguing with other cultures,Chinese literature can be better spread to the world.