Translating Chinese culture for Chinese readers

Abstract In such an increasingly globalised world, the prevalence of translingual practice has become more evident and the group of translingual writers ever more expanded. Against this backdrop, myriads of Chinese nationals and Chinese diaspora embark on a journey to narrate Chinese stories to the English or even foreign audiences by their non-native tongues. Amongst them, Dr. Lin Yutang, renowned for his debut novel Moment in Peking , is one of the earliest yet still influential examples. In that context, back translation of works as such becomes a prominent issue in translation studies. This paper investigates the back-translated version of Moment in Peking ( Jinghua Yanyun ) produced by Zhang Zhenyu. Through the lens of cultural translation theory, the paper intends to analyse how Zhang adopts the very strategies and techniques and renders Chinese cultural elements in a way acceptable to the Chinese audiences. Following Nida’s classifi ation of cultures, the paper divides specifi Chinese cultures contained in Moment in Peking into three categories: material cultural elements, social cultural elements and religious cultural elements. Within these three categories, selected are nineteen typical examples concerning tackling cultural nuances. All cases include the source text (ST), the target text (TT) and the machine translated text of TT (MT). ST is extracted from Lin’s translingual writing in Moment in Peking , TT from Zhang’s back translated version of Jinghua Yanyun , and MT from Google Translate version of TT. Accordingly, it is found that several strategies and techniques are adopted in Zhang’s back translation practice such as literal translation, free translation, transliteration, domestication, omission, amplification and substitution, while foreignisation is the only strategy left. Altogether, they help to convey the Chinese cultures contained in ST to the TT audiences, the Chinese people and demonstrate how Zhang manages to restore Chinese cultures in back translation in a flexible manner. The paper also sheds some light upon back translation of translingual writing texts in general and of texts related to Chinese culture in particular.