Translation Of Intertextual Meaning In Literature

Originally coined in the 1960s by French semioticist Julia Kristeva,intertextuality has been widely applied to both literary and cultural studies.The term has contributed significantly to the extension of the meaning of a text into its relations with other texts or contexts.In the field of translation studies,scholars have also introduced the theory of intertextuality as a new perspective to look at topics such as the translator’s task,cultural translation,etc.A postmodern novel by American contemporary author Michael Cunningham,The Hours draws on extensive intertextual relationships with Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece Mrs.Dalloway.As the intertextuality between the two novels plays a significant role in an in-depth interpretation of The Hours,the translator is assigned the task to identify and then handle the intertextual relationships properly when dealing with the translation of The Hours.Choosing Michael Cunningham’s The Hours and its Chinese translation by Jiaxiang Wang as the case study,the thesis attempts to provide answers to the following questions:first,what kinds of intertextuality does Cunningham employ in The Hours to construct meanings?Second,what translation strategies are utilized by the translator to better manage the intertextual relationships?To answer these two questions,close textual analysis is conducted in this thesis to identify meaningful intertexts in Cunningham’s source text,to observe and analyze the translation strategies adopted in Wang’s target text,and to further discuss how to better render the intertextual meanings of the original novel in the translation.The major findings of the thesis include:first,Cunningham employs such forms of intertextuality as quotation,allusion and pastiche in The Hours,and manages to construct meanings out of these intertextual relationships.Second,the translator adopts certain translation techniques in the target text such as rhetorical repetition,addition,paratext,etc.,so as to better render the intertextual meanings of the original novel.However,some intertextual relationships are omitted in the translation.Therefore,this thesis draws the conclusion that to re-construct the same intertextual meanings in the translation poses a great challenge to the translator.In this sense,the translator needs to leverage the limited textual resources by incorporating a portfolio of in-text and paratext translation strategies.In some cases,the translator might strategically omit certain intertextual links in the translation so as to strike a balance between the"recontextualization" and the readability of the translated literary text.