Translating And Re-creating In Literary Self-translation By Translators With Similar Bilingual Competence

As a special phenomenon of translation,self-translation is always considered as a tough and challenging task of translation.The difference between literary self-translation and conventional translation is that the self-translator enjoys a dual identity — both the author of the original text and the translated text.Thanks to the Culture Turn of translation studies and introduction of the identity of self-translation by Susan Bassnett,self-translation has come to attract scholars' attention.In China,it has always been a heated topic that how Chinese literature can go globalized.What's more,adopting which kind of translation model has always been the research focus of scholars.Under the broad settings of Chinese cultural globalization,in particular,the discussion of the self-translating model has its significance,theoretically and practically.In this thesis,Eileen Chang and Bai Xianyong are chosen as the research objects,who are the self-translators with similar bilingual competence.Their self-translation works The Golden Cangue and Winter Night from Taipei People are analyzed.By comparing their re-creation level and the pattern of its manifestation during their translation activity,the thesis aims at exploring whether bilingual competence is the influence factor on translating and re-creation,and how it affects the relationship between translating and re-creation.The main theoretical framework adopted in this thesis is Juliane House's Translation Quality Assessment Model.She regarded "translation" as the replacement of the original text by seeking semantic and pragmatic equivalence in the target text.The key to assessing the translation is to have an overall understanding of the nature of translation.By combining different dimensions and research methods,House built her own translation quality assessment model.In the revised model in 1997,House integrated the eight dimensions into Field,Tenor and Mode,and added Genre,making comparisons on semantic,pragmatic and textual level to evaluate the quality of translation.Thus the basis of judging whether the self-translator re-creates or not is to assess whether the self-translation version achieves equivalence at the above-mentioned three levels or shifts occur.The study finds that:(1)Owing to the different rules of symbolic composition and different cultural backgrounds,inequivalence between languages certainly exists.Thus,the process of covering the inequivalence by translation activity can be called the act of re-creating.According to House's Translation Quality Assessment Model,it can be seen that benefiting from thorough understanding of their own works and mastering the source and target languages,bilingual writers re-create on the lexical,sentential and textual levels to bridge the gaps between the two cultures in question.(2)Self-translators enjoy higher latitude and subjectivity due to their outstanding bilingual competence,with the result that self-translation version turns out to be more creative.The two self-translators under discussion have similar re-creation level and pattern of manifestation in self-translation process.They re-create where there is no equivalence to make themselves clearly understood by the target readers.(3)Eileen Chang's translation is more faithful to the original text,and when there is no equivalent expression she chooses to re-create.Bai Xianyong often adopts re-creation strategy in order to elicit a clear understanding on the part of the target readers.His self-translation is bold and flexible.He considers that the translator should be faithful to the source text while enjoying the freedom to re-create,not sticking to word-for-word translation.(4)Re-creation can preserve the cultural connotations and reproduce the source text.It can also meet the reading habit of the target readers.Under the broad settings of Chinese cultural globalization,re-creation in self-translation can preserve and better display traditional Chinese culture.The innovation of this thesis is that by using a different view — taking the language background and target language competence into consideration — to explore the relationship between translating and re-creating as well as the aim of re-creating.The significance of the study is that it can deepen the understanding of self-translation,and provide an enlightening view for further study.By studying the relationship between translating and re-creating,it can offer guidance for self-translating activity,producing a translation that is faithful to the original and better serves the target readers.