Writer as translator
Cultural translation in Han Suyin'sA Many-Splendoured Thing
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2179444 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chiyuan Zhuang (0000-0001-5401-6735) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 198-211 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-04 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2021.1894679 |
| OpenAlex | W3138586962 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
Read in terms of postcolonial translation theories, literary writings by cosmopolitan anglophone writers of Chinese background can be seen as acts of cultural translation, as in the case of Han Suyin’s 1952 autobiographical novel, A Many-Splendoured Thing. By employing different strategies to translate textual and non-textual culture-specific elements, Han’s work has fostered cross-cultural communication between east and west. On the one hand, by adopting a foreignizing strategy which retains the foreignness of the original text for translating non-political elements including Chinese literary works, philosophy, and folklore, she highlights differences between Chinese and western cultures. On the other hand, her domestication of the Chinese revolution, by comparing its political ideologies to Christianity, facilitates western readers’ understanding of the politics of China after 1949. Analysis of this “writer-as-translator” role sheds light on the complexities of postcolonial writing and moves postcolonial translation studies beyond binary oppositions based on political or discursive power relations
Art · China · Ideology · Literature · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Translation studies · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Translation Studies and Practices · History
| Highly cited | No |
|---|