摘 要

在跨文化交际的大背景下，文化冲突成为英汉翻译的主要障碍。中西方在语言习惯、文化背景方面存在的较大差异，不可避免地形成了文学作品翻译中的阻碍。对文化冲突的处理是否得当将直接影响译者的翻译质量，进而影响民族文学的传播。因此，在翻译过程中如何缓解、减少文化冲突变得尤为重要。 本文以华裔作家谭恩美的著名小说《喜福会》及程乃珊2006年的汉译本作为研究对象，结合前人的研究成果，进一步将《喜福会》中存在的文化冲突分为语言、思维、社会习俗和家庭观念方面的差异，分析其对文学作品的翻译所造成的影响。本文总结了在翻译过程中由于文化冲突所造成的问题，即相对不可译性与对等词汇空缺。并对归化和异化两种翻译策略进行分析，在此基础上提出了三点可行的解决方法来应对文化差异：第一，译者应当包容文化差异的存在，并对东西方文化差异有充分的认识和了解；第二，迎合读者需求，在翻译过程中译者不但要忠实于原文，更要向读者靠拢。满足读者的语言习惯和情感认知；第三，译者应善于运用翻译技巧。用不同的翻译技巧去化解不同的翻译难题，同时兼顾原文的文化特色和译文的语言流畅。

关键词：《喜福会》；文化冲突；中美文化；英汉翻译；翻译策略

Abstract

Cultural conflicts have become the main obstacles in English-Chinese translation within the overall context of cross-cultural communication. The significant differences between the east and west that exist in language habits and cultural connotation inevitably form a barrier in the course of translation. How to deal with cultural conflicts will directly influence translation quality, and thus affect the dissemination of national literature. Therefore, how to ease and reduce cultural conflicts in the process of translation becomes particularly important. This paper takes the famous novel The Joy Luck Club written by Chinese-American writer Amy Tan and its Chinese translation as its research objects. Combining with previous research results, the author further classifies the cultural conflicts existing in The Joy Luck Club as differences in language, thinking, social customs and family values, which are analyzed in terms of their impact on the translation of literary works. The problems caused by cultural conflicts in the translation process are summarized, namely the relative untranslatability and the vacancy of equivalents. Based on the analysis of translation strategies of domestication and foreignization, this paper proposes three possible solutions to deal with cultural differences: first, the translator should be inclusive to cultural differences and have a full understanding to it; second, the translator ought to pay attention to readers' needs, which means the translator should not only be faithful to the source text, but also get closer to the reader’s connection point, satisfying reader's language habits and emotional cognition; third, the translator should be good at using translation skills. Different translation skills are used to solve different translation problems, putting the cultural features of the source text and the fluency of the translation on an equal footing.

Key words: The Joy Luck Club; cultural conflicts; Chinese and American culture; English-Chinese Translation; translation strategy

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction to The Joy Luck Club 1

1.2 The Chinese translation of The Joy Luck Club 2

1.3 Research background and significance 3

1.4 The layout of this paper 5

2 The definition and classification of cultural conflicts 6

2.1 An elaboration to cultural conflicts 6

2.2 The classification of cultural conflicts in The Joy Luck Club 7

2.2.1 Differences in language 7

2.2.3 Differences in ways of thinking 8

2.2.3 Differences in social customs 9

2.2.4 Differences in family values 10

3 Problems caused by cultural conflicts in the translation 12

3.1The relative untranslatability 12

3.2The vacancy of equivalents 14

4 Translation strategies and possible solutions to cope with cultural conflicts 17

4.1 Flexible adoptation of domestication and foreignization 17

4.2 Possible solutions to cope with cultural conflicts 18

4.2.1 Being inclusive to cultural conflicts 19

4.2.2 Meeting the needs of readers 19

4.2.3 Utilizing translation tactics 20

5 Conclusions 21

References 22

Acknowledgements 23

A Study on Cultural Conflicts in E-C Translation: The Joy Luck Club As Case Study

1 Introduction

Literature review

The Joy Luck Club is divided into four parts which consists of 16 stories. In the book, four mothers were Chinese women suffering trials of life who lived in China for decades years and latter came to America to find a way out. Although they lived in America, in their deep hearts they thought they were still Chinese women. For their daughters, who shared the same eyes, hair and skin color with their mothers, they were born and grew up in American culture, having totally different value concepts against Chinese traditional thoughts. As a result, they often got into trouble in getting along with each other. The Joy Luck Club was started in Gui Lin, China by one of the four mothers, Suyuan Woo when it was during war time. After the immigration, four families officially joined in this club as their comfort and entertainment in America. At the end of the story, mothers and daughters reconciled with each other in the Joy Luck Club— the cultural habitat of China, defusing the tensions and easing the cultural conflicts between them. The story follows the life of four mothers and daughters, from the old generation who suffered from pains and oppressions to the new generations who grew up with free and self awareness, revealing the changing and developing of Chinese women. What happened between Suyuan Woo and Jingmei Woo is the main line of this book: owing to the huge differences in value concepts and ways of thinking, the mother and daughter had a bad relationship. However, when Jingmei Woo went back to China to meet the lost children for her mother, she was touched by the ordeals that her mother once suffered and the ties of blood she shared with her siblings. At that time, she accepted and understood her mother’s eastern culture and philosophy which she used to repel. It is the process from conflicts to reconciliation that shows the precious blood relationship which is beyond all barriers.

Although The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan ‘s debut, it still won many rave reviews when it was published in 1989, which quickly became a huge success, winning a roaring reputation for this young woman. This book, as the representative work of the exploration to Chinese culture and American culture, not only won the Young Book Reader's Best Book Award, the National Book Award, but also occupied a place in the New York Times bestseller list and became one of the four best-selling books in the United States at the beginning of its publication. In 2001, the novel was selected as a textbook for Norton Introduction to Literature edited by Zhang Ruihua. The whole story reflects the first generation of Chinese Americans’ understanding and tolerance to cultural conflicts and the cherished mother-daughter relationship behind cultural conflicts. There is no denying that The Joy Luck Club has a high literary value and research significance.

The Chinese translation of the Joy Luck Club

As the main medium for expressing human thinking, language is an important way to achieve the dissemination of national literature. However, it is the language barrier between the west and the east that hinders cross-cultural communication. Translation hence becomes an indispensable tool for language communication, which is playing an invaluable role in the communication of Chinese and Western literature. In the late 1980s, Chinese scholars began to pay attention to Chinese American literature, which is closely related to Chinese traditional culture. Related literary translation works had come out one after another. Known as the great melting pot, the United States has a very liberal literary environment where immigrant literature has developed and flourished. Amy Tan is one of the delegates in Chinese American writers, whose representative work The Joy Luck Club is regarded as a paradigm to describe the cultural conflicts between Chinese and America. The Chinese writer Cheng Naishan was fascinated by The Joy Luck Club after reading the source text and immediately translated this book with He Peihua and Yan Yingwei. In this paper, Cheng Naishan's 2006 translation is used as a research case to discuss the impact of the cultural conflicts in Chinese and Western cultures on the translation of literary works.

Generally speaking, the latest translation strategies are reflected in Cheng’s translation which does a great job in the respect of faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance. In order to take care of Chinese readers’ needs and simultaneously keep the original witty, the translator took a way of combining domestication and foreignization as translation strategies. Especially, the title of every chapter was changed into Chinese idioms. In addition, the translator deleted some annotations that were used to explain to the audiences who did not know Chinese traditions, which made the language of this translation clearer and more concise.