A Study On Non-native Language Writing And Cultural Back Translation Of Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare Of 1768

Soulstealers,as one of the most important achievements in European and American Sinology,contains in-depth analysis of Chinese social history and culture,thus attaching much importance to its translation in Chinese as well.But so far,there have not been many domestic researches on its translation and existing studies mainly regard it as ordinary translation,merely focusing on its translation strategies.Therefore,those researches ignore the work itself,as a product of non-native language writing,boasts its own characteristics.From the perspective of non-native language writing,this thesis analyzes the presentation of non-native language writing in the original and based on it further discusses its cultural back translation.Through combing the related literature,the author found that classifying the original first is the key to analyzing the manifestation of non-native language writing.The dislocation of the signifier and the signified in the original facilitates it as the combination of creation and translation,which results in the existence of lots of cultural vacancies and cultural misunderstandings in the original.They are precisely the factors that hinder the restoration of Chinese culture,thus making cultural back translation different from general translation.As regards the cultural back translation of Soulstealers,the translators are not confined in traditional translation strategies,but adopt the “reductive” strategy to trace the roots of different cultural elements to achieve the true restoration.In this thesis,the author has analyzed the deep connection between non-native language writing and cultural back translation,providing a new perspective for the translation study of Soulstealers and some guidance for the research of other non-native language writing works.As the premise of cultural back translation,non-native language writing endows the peculiarities of cultural back translation so the combination of the two further enriches the related research of cultural back translation.Through the cultural back translation of non-native language writing works such as Soulstealers,Chinese readers can also be exposed to the Chinese culture in others’ eyes,which to some extent achieves cultural feedback.Those works are widely spread in the West,which provides a new path for the transmission of Chinese culture.