Abstract:

In the current context of international communication capacity building, the foreign translation of Chinese literature has become a critical carrier for China to present its national image, spread Chinese culture and manifest its spirit to the world. As is known to all, translation is a guaranteed path for Chinese literature “going-out”, and translators play a vital role in the process of “going-out”. When the famous sinologist Howard Goldblatt and his wife Sylvia Li-chun Lin collaboratively translated the Chinese contemporary novel Massage in 2013 and 2014, they communicated closely with its writer Bi Feiyu. They totally asked 131 questions to the writer via e-mail while reading and translating the original work. And the author answered them one by one, effectively resolving translators’ puzzles, including problems about words and phrases comprehension, the logic structure of the text and original intentions of writing. By analyzing these emails, it can be found that translators’ “questioning” of the original literature work reflects the differences between Chinese and Western languages and cultures, and to some extent, helps the writer re-examine his own work from an external perspective. Therefore, the research based on correspondence between translators and the writer is of high value to comparative literature research and literary translation studies. The investigation of dynamic behavior of translators in the process of literary translation not only provides new ideas for the preservation and exchange of translation archives, but also opens up a new research paradigm for Chinese literary translation, so as to better present Chinese literature and culture to the world.

Key words: English translation of Chinese literature, translators’ “questioning”, translator and author, translation process, translation archives