Chapter 1 Literature Review
1.1 Previous Studies on Textless Back Translation
1.1.1 Textless Back Translation: Definition and its Studies
As early as in 1994, Liang Lvping refers to the phenomenon of textless back translation as “fuyi” (复译, retranslation) and lists several difficulties in translating A Leaf in the Storm and other works of this kind. Wu Lingling and Li Dan (2004) also touch upon the phenomenon of cultural back translation as “a special kind of back translation”.
In the year 2009, Wang Hongyin (2009: 236) first proposes the concept of “rootless back translation” as follows:
In the 1930s, Lin Yutang wrote the English novel Moment in Peking on foreign land. This novel now boasts three Chinese translations. The novel focuses on Chinese culture and the life of Old Beijing, but is written in English. Translation of this kind signifies the return only in terms of culture, rather than in terms of language and is therefore named “rootless back translation” -- namely a kind of back translation that draws on no original text.
Later on, Wang Hongyin (2015: 1-9) rectifies the term “rootless back translation” and replaces it with “textless back translation”, for though there is no existing Chinese text for translators to draw on, back translation of this kind still retains its cultural roots. According to his explanation, “textless back translation” refers to the kind of back translation in which translators translate China-themed literary works written in foreign languages (such as English) back into Chinese and resell the translated texts to the Chinese readers.
In their research on Moment in Peking, Wang Hongyin and Jiang Huimin (2012) employ some new terms such as “foreign language creation” ( 异 语 创 作 ), “Chinese/rootless back translation” (无根回译) and “original text restoration” (原文复现) for case analysis and for further studies on “literary works about the Chinese culture written in a foreign language and translated into Chinese again”. Jiang Huimin (2013) explores the theory of “rootless back translation”, including its application scope, reference factors, translation evaluation and its final version. In the same article where he puts forward the concept of “textless back translation”, Wang Hongyin (2015) then focuses on the manipulation of paratexts including title, preface, etc., and of the novel’s content, deepening our understanding of culture and texts. Based on A Judge Dee Mystery, Wang Hongyin (2016) elaborates on a series of related theoretical issues, including culture reconstruction and misconception in textless back translation and points out the theoretical significance of textless back translation, its diversity in practice as well as its influence on the translation of contemporary Chinese literature into foreign languages so as to “justify and explain” textless back translation from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
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1.2 Previous Studies on Fifth Chinese Daughter and its Chinese Translation
As the first widely recognized Chinese-American writer in the white American society, Jade Snow Wong serves as a pioneer in the history of Chinese American literature. Her first autobiographical novel, Fifth Chinese Daughter, has gained millions of readers and has been selected in the junior and senior high school textbooks in America and in the California Literature together with the works of Mark Twain, Jack London, John Steinbeck as well as Fitzgerald, which is a huge recognition for American Chinese writers back in the 1940s. Known as the precursor of Chinese American literature, Fifth Chinese Daughter has been researched by a number of scholars.
As a stout supporter of Jade Snow Wong, Zhang Ziqing(2003) personally interviewed Jade Snow Wong and gained first-hand information about her writing philosophy. In the interview, Jade Snow Wong explains her motivation in writing the book – she finds it surprising that American people have tons of misunderstanding for the Chinese culture. According to Jade Snow Wong, a westerner can be an “expert in Chinese art, but rather knows nothing about the Chinese people’s life and mind”. To deal with the problem, Jade Snow Wong writes the book to promote people’s understanding of the Chinese people. Besides, it is also inappropriate for today’s critics to “use their new ruler to weigh over the unknown past”.
The most heated argument over Jade Snow Wong’s works is the so-called “whitenized” tendency. A number of critics, represented by Chinese American critics Frank Chin, Sau-ling Wong and Korean American critic Elaine Kim tend to believe that “whitenized” writers are accepting values and philosophy of the white.
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Chapter 2 Acculturation Theory
2.1 Definition of Acculturation
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, “acculturation” refers to “cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture” or “a merging of cultures as a result of prolonged contact”. J. W. Powell was the first man who put forward the term to depict certain culture phenomenon.
However, now when we talk about “acculturation”, the definition posted by Redfield, Linton and Herskovits (1936) are the one that seems to be better-received. According to their definition, acculturation refers to the constant and direct culture contact between two groups, which consist of individuals and boast different cultures. Specifically speaking, the researches on acculturation nowadays mainly focuses on acculturation’s influence on ethnocultural groups and individuals, rather than larger and mainstream society.
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2.2 Model/Framework of Acculturation
As the research on acculturation deepens, a variety of psychologists such as Bourhis (1997), Ward (1999), Flannery (2001) and Berry (2002), have come up with their own theoretical frameworks. These frameworks, according to Yu Wei (2005), can fall into the following categories on the basis of the number of dimensions.
(1) The Uni-dimensional Framework
At first, the framework of acculturation was considered to be uni-dimensional. This framework was first proposed by Parks and Miller in the 1920s and was later developed by Gordon (Flannery, Reise and Yu, 2001). This mode holds that -- an individual, starting from the original “heritage culture”, is constantly heading towards the mainstream culture and will surely reach mainstream culture in the end. In other words, the original migrant individual will end up being psychologically and culturally assimilated and homogenized. According to this framework, domination is the one and only relationship in the end. For instance, the concept of “melting pot” and “Americanization” are the product of uni-dimensional acculturation.
(2) The Two-dimensional Framework
Later on, the two-dimensional framework, represented by the division of Berry, draws the attention of academic circle at large. Berry holds that orientations to two distinct issues can draw a clearer distinction than the former uni-dimensional framework. These issues are: 1) maintenance of heritage, culture and identity; 2) relationships sought among groups.
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Chapter 3 Language Features of Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter ............................ 18
3.1 Lexical Features of Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter ....... 18
3.2 Syntactical Features of Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter . 22
Chapter 4 Analysis of Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter ....... 28
4.1 Assimilation in Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter .............. 28
4.2 Integration in Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter ................ 35
Chapter 4 Analysis of Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter
4.1 Assimilation in Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter
The strategy of assimilation is often adopted by those who feel reluctant to hold onto their original heritage, culture and identity and in the meantime are willing to partake in the larger society and prefer cultural interaction among different cultures. In terms of textless back translation, the assimilation strategy stresses that in translating certain cultural elements, translators are obliged to restore these elements as much as they can and reach out to the host cultural readers by catering to their needs better, thus making the translation better-received in the host culture. In translating China-themed topics and stories written in English, the assimilation strategy is most commonly applied, resulting from the frequent appearances of Chinese cultural elements -- the significant indicator of works for textless back translation.
With regard to the difficulty and necessity of text restoration, this paper classifies the assimilation strategy of translation into “accurate assimilation” and “imprecise assimilation”. To be specific, “imprecise assimilation” in Hua Nv A Wu can be further divided into three categories, namely, “visualization in translating vague expressions”, “abstraction in translating specific expressions” and “synonymous replacement”.
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Conclusion
This thesis aims to make a comparative study between source text and target text of Fifth Chinese Daughter from the perspective of acculturation theory. The detailed comparative analysis is conducted to interpret the language features of the textless back translation Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter and the translation strategies in the textless back translation of Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter in terms of assimilation, integration, separation and marginalization.
This thesis holds that a large number of Chinese culture-loaded elements are in both the source text and the target text, which are typical of China-themed works written in English and their textless back translations. For this reason, China-themed works written in English boast a distinctly richer diction than other literary works written in English. It is obvious that the translator, in translating the text, regards the source text as the very standard and considers it as his duty to restore the Chinese culture-loaded elements to their very equivalents in the host culture as much as he can. In restoring these elements, the translator removes those modifiers and explanations that were originally added to make the Chinese culture-loaded elements clearer to the English readers who are relatively unfamiliar with the traditional Chinese culture, thereby simplifying the language. Besides, textless back translators are inclined to simplify their diction also for the sake of readability as conventional translators do. Through comparing the target text of Fifth Chinese Daughter with other Chinese target texts, the consistency in data may well justify the argument that textless back translation is, by nature, a kind of translation.
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