这些女子，她们在1949年前来到美国，嫁了人，之前都有过不同的故事。有的在逃难中失去了双胞胎女儿，有的离开了富有的家庭，有的挣脱了婆家的禁锢。她们如一根根天鹅的羽毛，漂洋过海，暂时告别了故土以及即将到来的巨大变革，开始了新的人生。脱胎换骨、劫后重生、凤凰涅槃竟是那么难，难到自己的女儿——土生土长的美国人都无法摆脱那种文化的辐射。离婚的女儿对母亲说：“I learned to be tragic from you.”即将再婚的女儿对母亲的一个否定的眼神都无法容忍；而精美则将背负着逝去母亲的期待去中国与她同母异父的两个姐姐相见。
来自: 豆瓣作者: 安于途$ 时间: 2012-9-2 10:33
I remember the day when I picked up the first piece of this jigsaw and examined it with my long-lost curiosity. “…for a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, ‘ this feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.’ …” I was imagining what a loving feather it must be when I got a call from my mother.
“Really you should go to see a doctor.”
“Trust me, mom. It takes time. You know it’s not like an injection.” I answered, in the same unassailable tone.
“But… you are not a real practitioner after all. How can you test the home-make prescriptions on your own body?”
“No, that’s not the case.” I said lightheartedly, as always, trying to intensify my firmness and to lessen her worry. “I’m feeling better. I add more Bie Jia（鳖甲，一种中药材，清虚热）in today’s prescription and I shall be fine soon. …You know what? the amount of Qing Hao（青蒿，鳖甲的辅药）should not be too much when combined with biejia! I didn’t know that before! No wonder the tea failed to wash down my Nei Re（内热）…”
“All right all right.” My mother finally gave in, “Down drink your tea and see whether it works... But remember to keep an eye on the coating on your tongue（舌苔）and adapt your prescription !”Sure.
I drank down the tea later and I was fine the next day—not thanked God, but thanked to the magic Chinese herbs.
I begin with this mini drama, not to demonstrate what I’ve read out of The Joy Luck Club about mother-daughter relationship. Clearly as many readers see it, the mother-daughter bond is the most distinguished theme of this fiction. I can feel that from the overwhelming majority of sentences throughout the book. Some others focus on the conflict between Chinese culture and American culture. And yes, I can see their reflections from the very beginning of the story.
I shall be glad that I’m having a very good relationship with my mother. So I don’t feel as much strongly about Amy Tan’s delicate feelings. And the fact that I’ve never experienced culture shocks abroad saves me from feeling the frustration.
What fascinate me most are the scattering pieces of Chinese philosophy in The Joy Luck Club. Some are tales Chinese mothers used to tell their kids; some are teachings Chinese mothers inculcate in their kids as important life lessons. When pieced together, I suppose, they will surely make a work of stunning beauty.
I’m blessed to read this story at this point of my life, when I feel so strongly I am losing some important connections, being a foreign language major and a Chinese at the same time.
During the past two years, I have made English learning my priority. It’s not the kind of painful, struggling process you are likely to imagine, but a fascinating journey to a new world. In a sense I’m learning English for the sake of a promising future. In a larger sense, the opportunity of mastering a foreign language and getting familiar with a foreign culture is what I will be grateful to for the rest of my life, because it grants me the same good opportunity to learn to see things differently. So I have been feeling frustrated since the beginning of this semester, thinking that I’ll soon have much less access to the English language.
Somehow I got badly sick. I followed my doctors’ instruction and took several biopsies. Nothing happened except that my cough became severe every time when the weather changed. I decided to see a Chinese medicine practitioner. After the mysterious Wang-wen-wen-qie” process（望闻问切）, he said, “well, no big deal. You are just having Han Qi（寒气）inside your body.” You know what happened afterwards. Again it was the Chinese herbal teas that finally relieved me from the pain. Something shameful began to dawn on me, that this glorious culture receives my attention only when I am in need. Truth be told, I had had a good acquaintance with the traditional Chinese medicine in my family all these years. Yet I never had the sense that I should learn more.
Months ago I set up a blog to write English diary. Since then I seldom write a diary in English or in Chinese. The reason was awkwardly plain: my writing course teacher once said keeping a diary is a good way to improve English writing. I perfectly understood what he thought there was no need to say—write less in Chinese if you want to improve English writing. When I didn’t figure out how to write down what happened in English, I quit the whole diary thing. That day when I was handing my sick leave to our department head, I realized for the first time how ugly my Chinese handwriting had become. I once wrote an adorable hand.
It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem right. I am an English major at the moment, yet I’ve been a Chinese all along.
I became lost.
That was when I read into The Joy Luck Club. I felt I could understand perfectly what each sentence each tale was trying to convey. At first I was holding a pencil to make marks anywhere. Later, I sort of, could not tell which sentence was not a sentence of my own. I became Amy Tan reading her own diary.
And that was when all came back to me. The sense of identity. The sense of belonging. The belief in my beloved land and her remarkable philosophy.
Chinese immigrants in foreign lands are not the unique group of people who are going through a loss of their identity, their root. Foreign language learners who make foreign language the largest part of their routine life, when they begin to show great interest in the American Civil War without ever starting to learn something about the civil war in China in the 1940s, when they begin to quit writing something rather than writing it in Chinese, they are actually piecing up the fragments of foreign culture to make a visa to the “wonderland”. Owing to their unyielding effort, they succeed. They can now speak perfect American English, British English, French, German, Italian, whatever. They are now proud of their rich knowledge of foreign culture. They, too, are immigrants. But they are different from immigrants like Amy Tan. These immigrants were born to speak and write authentic Chinese. They were brought up being told what an awesome culture they had. They have just, consciously or unconsciously, chosen to leave it behind.
I pick up every piece of The Joy Luck Club jigsaw, appreciating every detail on it. When I finally piece them up, it must be a breathtaking masterpiece, just like the one I’ll no longer leave behind, as a Chinese foreign language learner.
Recommendations
1.detailed information about Amy Tan on Academy of Achievement:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tan0pro-1
2.BBC World Book Club—Amy Tan discusses The Joy Luck Club with readers around the world(video):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/ondemand/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_amy_tan_one?bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=1&size=au&bbwm=1
在这三个流散女性作家的作品中，都可以寻找到“女儿”这一身份，如谭恩美《喜福会》（The Joy Luck Club）中的吴精美，严歌苓《人寰》中的“我”，《穗子物语》中的“穗子”，虹影《饥饿的女儿》中的“六六”。无一例外，小说的主人公都以“自我”作为写作的叙述视角和第一人物，这是女性书写的一个特征。这种“自我于她们是第一重要的，是创作的第一人物。这些人物总是改头换面地登场，万变不离其宗。[14]”然而，在华裔作家谭恩美的笔下，这种“自我”是作为极致的独立个体来塑造的，这种极致冲破了中西方并存的父权制，女性意识极为强烈，同时这种“自我”同中国的传统文化和在传统文化下生长的中国形象之间呈现的是断裂关系，“是由自我去‘定义外铄的关系和角色[10]”，这与西方的存在主义重视“自我”密不可分。这时候的中国形象在文本中呈现的目的就变得私有化，个人化，这与传统的中国形象所体现的“二人”关系[10]之间是不平衡的。比如在小说《喜福会》中，展现的是中国移民的母亲与在美国生长的女儿之间的文化冲突，但是这种文化冲突并没有被独立出来作为一个民族和另外一个民族的“对抗点”，而是将这种文化冲突当成是母女间互相了解和联系的障碍体，并最终被吴精美的“中国之行”所突破，搭建了一座所谓的“文化桥梁”。文本中出现的“玉坠”、“红烛”等不能简单而又自然而然地被视为中国传统文化的代表，此时它们已经是作为母女沟通的纽带存在。书中吴精美对母亲这个土生土长的中国人的不了解直接暴露出作者对中国文化的陌生感，并且她对那些母亲所代表的中国形象的了解终归是停留在“母亲身份”的层面上。王德威在《想象中国的方法》的序中提到“小说的流变与‘中国之命运’看似无甚攸关，却每有若合符节之处”，“比起历史政治中的中国，小说所反映的中国或许更真切实在些[15]”。而在谭恩美的笔下却没有“真切”的“中国形象”存在。华裔女作家谭恩美笔下的小说更应该把它当作人情小说来读，而不是烙印着中国文化标记的流散小说，它已经漂浮于中国的文化根本之外。而谭恩美所做的是在异国的土地上“兜售中国的历史”。她的小说对中国形象的平面化，线性化处理迎合了美国主流社会对于边缘生活和情感的窥视欲和对他们眼中所谓“落后民族”的救赎情节。
PS：说“兜售历史”似乎有点严重了。
来自: 豆瓣作者: Qgoir$ 时间: 2012-9-2 10:33
The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan’s debut to the world, and to be honest, this is the first time I finished an English novel. It drives me into a fancy world where I can find a dramatic China, coiling her body between the tradition and the modernity. Four pair of mothers and daughters being obedient or independent to the past and future, their stubbornness and the confusion between the two different cultures and their identities is quite touching.
Unfortunately, it seems that the world manifested by Cheng Naishan etc. is relatively different form the world Amy Tan created. I did not realize the problem until I picked up their translation text just for scanning, after the reading of the English version . The problem blooms so seriously that I am beginning to doubt the contemporary translation circumstance in China, combining other reading experiences I had before.
As the translation theories have developed rapidly since the 20th century, the source text is no longer unchangeable. Translators’ subjectivity is taken into consideration in common discussion, “equivalence” generally replaces “faithfulness” as the standard of translation, and “Catford’s linguistic theory of translation and Eugene Nida’s dynamic equivalence are the two most representative theories concerning “equivalence”. “Their theories on the one hand admit the status of the author and the original text, and on the other hand they also confront the personal involvement of translator in his or her work.”(陈燕敏，13) But how to keep balance between the authors’ authorities and translators’ freedom is not an immediately solvable question concerning both translation theorists and translators.
I chose Part 1, chapter 2 AN-MEI HSU: Scar and Part 2, chapter 7 ROSE HSU JORDAN: Half and Half (mainly because these two chapters constitute half of one mother-daughter story: AN-MEI HSU and ROSE HSU JORDAN’ story) to show the pessimistic statistics. 53 phrases and sentences are not completely translated into Chinese, including 2 entire paragraphs deleted ; 57 Paraphrases, 33 alterations with less changing of meaning while 20 “modifications” with sharp changing in significance and 4 changes in sentence patterns; 12 creations, which the author actually does not mention at all.
1. The Missing Organs.
The missing tissues can be easily fond throughout the whole book, some are acceptable:
ST ：Mrs. Jordan also had a few words to say. Ted had casually invited me to a family picnic, the annual clan reunion held by the polo fields in Golden Gate Park. (Tan, Amy, 117, emphasis added)
This sentence is taken from ROSE HSU Jordan’s explanation on the attitude towards Rose and Ted’s relationship from Ted’s mother. Here the “clan reunion” and “by the polo field” is not stated in the Chinese translation, but it has less effort on purport expression, thus this deletion is permissible.
But some are quite serious:
ST: My mother did not let her chin fall down. She walked back to the beach and put the Bible down. She picked up the thermos and teacup and walked to the water’s edge. Then she told me that the night before she had reached back into her life, back when she was a girl in China, and this is what she had found.
“I remember a boy who lost his hand in a firecracker accident,” she said. “I saw the shreds of this boy’s arm, his tears, and then I heard his mother’s claim that he would grow back another hand, better than the last. This mother said she would pay back an ancestral debt ten times over. She would use a water treatment to soothe the wrath of Chu Jung, the three-eyed god of fire. And true enough the next week this boy was riding a bicycle, both hands steering a straight course past my astonished eyes!”
And then my mother became very quiet. She spoke again in a thoughtful, respectful manner.
“An ancestor of ours once stole water from a sacred well. Now the water is trying to steal back. We must sweeten the temper of the Coiling Dragon who lives in the sea. And then we must make him loosen his coils from Bing by giving him another treasure he can hide.”
My mother poured out tea sweetened with sugar into the teacup, and threw this into the sea. And then she opened her fist. In her palm was a ring of watery blue sapphire, a gift from her mother, who had died many years before. This ring, she told me drew coveting stares from women and made them inattentive to the children they guarded so jealously. This would make the Coiling Dragon forgetful of Bing. She threw the ring into the water. (Tan, 128~129, emphasis added)
This short passage is taken from ROSE HSU JORDAN‘s memory on AN-MEI HSU’s effort to get her son, Bing back from drowning in the sea. Obviously the translators rewrite the plot here, completely delete the story which AN-MEI told her daughter and the prayer she said before the symbolic ceremony. All the legends and stories told by the mothers in the frame tales create a mysterious and unfamiliar scene of China for Chinese readers, offering ways to know how the author understands and interprets her native culture and to glimpse what the image of China it is in the eyes’ of Chinese Americans. The stories may be too eccentric to be translated, but the abridgement diminishes the sentimental expression and reduced the vivid story to a quite pale narrative.
2. The Pathological Blood Vessels
The pathological blood vessels are most common problems in the translation text, due to the abuse of free translation. The method of paraphrase does help the local readers comprehend foreign text better, but sometimes it will lead to transformations of significance:
ST: “An-mei,” she (Popo) murmured, now more gently. “Your dying clothes are very plain. They are not fancy, because you are still a child. If you die, you will have a short life and you will still owe your family a debt. Your funeral will be very small. Our mourning time for you will be very short.” (Tan, 47, emphasis added)
This is from AN-MEI HSU’s childhood memory when she is dying. Cheng comprehends Popo’s words “Our mourning time for you will be very short.” as “we will forget you soon (我们会很快把你忘掉的).” This might be a way of interpreting, but “mourning time” can also represent the special period that Chinese people mourn for the defunct family members, usually will be seven days or forty-nine days, even three years for parents in ancient China. A short mourning time, as Popo explained in the text, is because kids owed family a debt when they died young. It is a common tradition that the funeral for seniority is more magnificent than funeral for children in China; whereas “We will forget you soon” lose all the information above and simply bring an extra emotional influence that AN-MEI’s relatives in Ningpo are unconcerned with her, she is not even worth a usual mourning time, thus a more negative portrait for Popo is furbished.
Another paraphrase case, which is related to rhetoric:
ST: “Ted, if you want me to go, I’ll go.” (Said Rose)
And it was as if something snapped in him (referred Ted). “How the hell did we ever get married? Did you just say ‘I do’ because the minister said ‘repeat after me’? What would you have done with your life if I had never married you? Did it ever occur to you?”
This was such a big leap in logic, between what I said and what he said, that I thought we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
But now I realize that Ted knew what he was saying all long. He wanted to show me the rift. Because later that evening he called from Los Angeles and said he wanted a divorce. (Tan, 120, emphasis added)
This part is taken from ROSE HSU JORDAN’s narration on the quarrel between Ted and her, starting from Ted’s querying if Rose wanted to come along with him to Los Angeles for a dermatology course. What the narrator (Rose) mentioned here “This was such a big leap in logic” is referred to “between what I said and what he said”, because just before Ted‘s roaring they were talking about Rose’s decision on going or not, a casual topic at home but suddenly Ted started to roar about how did they get married; while the “big leap” in translation text is point to “our behaviors lead to the crash of relationship”. The denotation of the words has been switched.
The simile which narrator used to describe the broken relationship shrink to something not so pathetic in the translation: “unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.” is translated into “finally lead to the divorce (最终导致了这场婚姻的破裂。)”. “The dangerous chasm” implies that the marriage is in danger, but expressing it as a declaration causes it to lose so much poetic imagination and sentiment within the expressions. The reason to make this change in rhetoric seems unreasonable and doubtable, since from my point of view, it is beyond the essentials.
And two instances of sentence pattern transformation:
ST 1: And when I say that it is certainly true, that our marriage is over, I know what else she will say: “Then you must save it.” (Tan, 116, emphasis added)
ST 2：I see him standing by the wall, safe, calling to my father, who looks over his shoulder toward Bing. How glad I am that my father is going to watch him for a while! (Tan, 125, emphasis added)
In the first case, instead of the original declarative sentence “Then you must save it.”, an interrogative sentence “It can not be saved at all? / You can not save it at all? (一点也没法挽救了？) ” takes position; While in the second case, the translators use a declarative sentence “I’ m glad that my father is going to watch him for a while. (我很高兴爸能代我看管他一阵。) ” to replace the exclamatory sentence “How glad I am that my father is going to watch him for a while!”. Generally speaking, various intimations and emotions can be touched though different sentence patterns, to translate the sentence patterns which author used to describe certain feelings is not that difficult to do, then why the translators choose to change them remains a query from the readers .
3. The Tumors.
The translators’ subjectivity continues functioning, besides cutting off and replacing, they create some brand-new expressions to demonstrate their abilities:
ST 1: After her prayer, her faith was so great that she saw him, three times, waving to her from just beyond the first wave. “Nale!” ----There! And she would stand straight as a sentinel, until three times her eyesight failed her and Bing turned into a dark spot of churning seaweed. (Tan, 128)
ST 2: “He’s there,” she said firmly. She pointed to the jagged wall across the water. “I see him. He is in a cave, sitting on a little step above the water. He is hungry and a little cold, but he has learned now not to complain too much.” (Tan, 129)
It seems that the beautiful sentences translators add on should not be blamed; it creates a more vivid scene and reinforces the charm of the plot. However, translation is not an activity of composing; translators should not over exaggerate while some small creating methods are acceptable.
After the author completes the book with the last drop of ink and sends it to the publisher, the work should be considered as a lively creature; nothing can be easily cut off or added on. However, the translation cannot be done only though literal translating, multiple strategies and methods such as free translating, proper deletion and some appropriate transformations do perfect the translation text and make it easier for readers to understand. As Cheng Naishan states in the postscript of the 2006 version: “both literal translation and paraphrase strategies are adopted in order to cater for Chinese readers’ habits and preserve the jocoseness and American humor in the original text. This version has deleted some explanations which aim to help foreign readers who don’t know Chinese traditions too much. (为了照顾中国读者的阅读习惯，尽量保留原作的诙谐和美国式的幽默，在翻译过程中，直译与意译相结合；这个版本删除了一些作者原为照顾不了解中国习俗的外国读者而作的一些注释)” (程乃珊, 260) But if this is the case, the Chinese culture in author’s mind will be blurred and the world author created will be distorted, compare to the original text.
Since the translator’s subjectivity involves a large number of factors, as Meng Xiaoqing puts, “the translator’s ideology, thinking patterns, aesthetic-orientation, empathy, and personal experiences and so on. It is related to circumstances more individual in nature such as one’s origin, race, education, gender, age, social class, sexual orientation, political convictions, moral values, religious beliefs, personal experiences, relationships and interests, all factors contributing to the positional of the translator” (Meng Xiaoqing, 22)，responsible translators should be prudent to use the strategies and methods (especially when translating the foreign books into native language.) for assuring the original meaning and tastes.
References
Graham, D. Edward. “Unquiet on the Western Front: The ‘Orientalism’ of Contemporary Chinese-American Women Writers.” Oriental Prospects: Western Literature and the Lure of the East. Ed. C.C. Barfoot and Theo d' Haen. Havard: Rodopi B.V.Editions, 1998
Meng, Xiangqi. Translator, subjectivity and Translation Norms. Beijing: Beijing Language and Culture University, 2004.
Schell, Orville. “Your Mother Is in Your Bones.” New York Times 19 March, 1989.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
陈燕敏. Back Translation and Reproduction of Author’s Style in Chinese American Literature----A Case Study of Joy Luck Club. 上海：上海外国语大学学位论文库，2009.
谭恩美. 程乃珊、贺培华、严映薇（译）.《喜福会》. 上海：上海译文出版社，2006.
肖薇.《異質文化語境下的女性書寫——海外華人女性寫作比較研究》. 成都：四川出版集團巴蜀書社，2005.
这些女子，她们在1949年前来到美国，嫁了人，之前都有过不同的故事。有的在逃难中失去了双胞胎女儿，有的离开了富有的家庭，有的挣脱了婆家的禁锢。她们如一根根天鹅的羽毛，漂洋过海，暂时告别了故土以及即将到来的巨大变革，开始了新的人生。脱胎换骨、劫后重生、凤凰涅槃竟是那么难，难到自己的女儿——土生土长的美国人都无法摆脱那种文化的辐射。离婚的女儿对母亲说：“I learned to be tragic from you.”即将再婚的女儿对母亲的一个否定的眼神都无法容忍；而精美则将背负着逝去母亲的期待去中国与她同母异父的两个姐姐相见。
来自: 豆瓣作者: 安于途$ 时间: 2012-9-2 10:34
I remember the day when I picked up the first piece of this jigsaw and examined it with my long-lost curiosity. “…for a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, ‘ this feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.’ …” I was imagining what a loving feather it must be when I got a call from my mother.
“Really you should go to see a doctor.”
“Trust me, mom. It takes time. You know it’s not like an injection.” I answered, in the same unassailable tone.
“But… you are not a real practitioner after all. How can you test the home-make prescriptions on your own body?”
“No, that’s not the case.” I said lightheartedly, as always, trying to intensify my firmness and to lessen her worry. “I’m feeling better. I add more Bie Jia（鳖甲，一种中药材，清虚热）in today’s prescription and I shall be fine soon. …You know what? the amount of Qing Hao（青蒿，鳖甲的辅药）should not be too much when combined with biejia! I didn’t know that before! No wonder the tea failed to wash down my Nei Re（内热）…”
“All right all right.” My mother finally gave in, “Down drink your tea and see whether it works... But remember to keep an eye on the coating on your tongue（舌苔）and adapt your prescription !”Sure.
I drank down the tea later and I was fine the next day—not thanked God, but thanked to the magic Chinese herbs.
I begin with this mini drama, not to demonstrate what I’ve read out of The Joy Luck Club about mother-daughter relationship. Clearly as many readers see it, the mother-daughter bond is the most distinguished theme of this fiction. I can feel that from the overwhelming majority of sentences throughout the book. Some others focus on the conflict between Chinese culture and American culture. And yes, I can see their reflections from the very beginning of the story.
I shall be glad that I’m having a very good relationship with my mother. So I don’t feel as much strongly about Amy Tan’s delicate feelings. And the fact that I’ve never experienced culture shocks abroad saves me from feeling the frustration.
What fascinate me most are the scattering pieces of Chinese philosophy in The Joy Luck Club. Some are tales Chinese mothers used to tell their kids; some are teachings Chinese mothers inculcate in their kids as important life lessons. When pieced together, I suppose, they will surely make a work of stunning beauty.
I’m blessed to read this story at this point of my life, when I feel so strongly I am losing some important connections, being a foreign language major and a Chinese at the same time.
During the past two years, I have made English learning my priority. It’s not the kind of painful, struggling process you are likely to imagine, but a fascinating journey to a new world. In a sense I’m learning English for the sake of a promising future. In a larger sense, the opportunity of mastering a foreign language and getting familiar with a foreign culture is what I will be grateful to for the rest of my life, because it grants me the same good opportunity to learn to see things differently. So I have been feeling frustrated since the beginning of this semester, thinking that I’ll soon have much less access to the English language.
Somehow I got badly sick. I followed my doctors’ instruction and took several biopsies. Nothing happened except that my cough became severe every time when the weather changed. I decided to see a Chinese medicine practitioner. After the mysterious Wang-wen-wen-qie” process（望闻问切）, he said, “well, no big deal. You are just having Han Qi（寒气）inside your body.” You know what happened afterwards. Again it was the Chinese herbal teas that finally relieved me from the pain. Something shameful began to dawn on me, that this glorious culture receives my attention only when I am in need. Truth be told, I had had a good acquaintance with the traditional Chinese medicine in my family all these years. Yet I never had the sense that I should learn more.
Months ago I set up a blog to write English diary. Since then I seldom write a diary in English or in Chinese. The reason was awkwardly plain: my writing course teacher once said keeping a diary is a good way to improve English writing. I perfectly understood what he thought there was no need to say—write less in Chinese if you want to improve English writing. When I didn’t figure out how to write down what happened in English, I quit the whole diary thing. That day when I was handing my sick leave to our department head, I realized for the first time how ugly my Chinese handwriting had become. I once wrote an adorable hand.
It didn’t seem right, didn’t seem right. I am an English major at the moment, yet I’ve been a Chinese all along.
I became lost.
That was when I read into The Joy Luck Club. I felt I could understand perfectly what each sentence each tale was trying to convey. At first I was holding a pencil to make marks anywhere. Later, I sort of, could not tell which sentence was not a sentence of my own. I became Amy Tan reading her own diary.
And that was when all came back to me. The sense of identity. The sense of belonging. The belief in my beloved land and her remarkable philosophy.
Chinese immigrants in foreign lands are not the unique group of people who are going through a loss of their identity, their root. Foreign language learners who make foreign language the largest part of their routine life, when they begin to show great interest in the American Civil War without ever starting to learn something about the civil war in China in the 1940s, when they begin to quit writing something rather than writing it in Chinese, they are actually piecing up the fragments of foreign culture to make a visa to the “wonderland”. Owing to their unyielding effort, they succeed. They can now speak perfect American English, British English, French, German, Italian, whatever. They are now proud of their rich knowledge of foreign culture. They, too, are immigrants. But they are different from immigrants like Amy Tan. These immigrants were born to speak and write authentic Chinese. They were brought up being told what an awesome culture they had. They have just, consciously or unconsciously, chosen to leave it behind.
I pick up every piece of The Joy Luck Club jigsaw, appreciating every detail on it. When I finally piece them up, it must be a breathtaking masterpiece, just like the one I’ll no longer leave behind, as a Chinese foreign language learner.
Recommendations
1.detailed information about Amy Tan on Academy of Achievement:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tan0pro-1
2.BBC World Book Club—Amy Tan discusses The Joy Luck Club with readers around the world(video):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/ondemand/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_amy_tan_one?bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=1&size=au&bbwm=1
在这三个流散女性作家的作品中，都可以寻找到“女儿”这一身份，如谭恩美《喜福会》（The Joy Luck Club）中的吴精美，严歌苓《人寰》中的“我”，《穗子物语》中的“穗子”，虹影《饥饿的女儿》中的“六六”。无一例外，小说的主人公都以“自我”作为写作的叙述视角和第一人物，这是女性书写的一个特征。这种“自我于她们是第一重要的，是创作的第一人物。这些人物总是改头换面地登场，万变不离其宗。[14]”然而，在华裔作家谭恩美的笔下，这种“自我”是作为极致的独立个体来塑造的，这种极致冲破了中西方并存的父权制，女性意识极为强烈，同时这种“自我”同中国的传统文化和在传统文化下生长的中国形象之间呈现的是断裂关系，“是由自我去‘定义外铄的关系和角色[10]”，这与西方的存在主义重视“自我”密不可分。这时候的中国形象在文本中呈现的目的就变得私有化，个人化，这与传统的中国形象所体现的“二人”关系[10]之间是不平衡的。比如在小说《喜福会》中，展现的是中国移民的母亲与在美国生长的女儿之间的文化冲突，但是这种文化冲突并没有被独立出来作为一个民族和另外一个民族的“对抗点”，而是将这种文化冲突当成是母女间互相了解和联系的障碍体，并最终被吴精美的“中国之行”所突破，搭建了一座所谓的“文化桥梁”。文本中出现的“玉坠”、“红烛”等不能简单而又自然而然地被视为中国传统文化的代表，此时它们已经是作为母女沟通的纽带存在。书中吴精美对母亲这个土生土长的中国人的不了解直接暴露出作者对中国文化的陌生感，并且她对那些母亲所代表的中国形象的了解终归是停留在“母亲身份”的层面上。王德威在《想象中国的方法》的序中提到“小说的流变与‘中国之命运’看似无甚攸关，却每有若合符节之处”，“比起历史政治中的中国，小说所反映的中国或许更真切实在些[15]”。而在谭恩美的笔下却没有“真切”的“中国形象”存在。华裔女作家谭恩美笔下的小说更应该把它当作人情小说来读，而不是烙印着中国文化标记的流散小说，它已经漂浮于中国的文化根本之外。而谭恩美所做的是在异国的土地上“兜售中国的历史”。她的小说对中国形象的平面化，线性化处理迎合了美国主流社会对于边缘生活和情感的窥视欲和对他们眼中所谓“落后民族”的救赎情节。
PS：说“兜售历史”似乎有点严重了。
来自: 豆瓣作者: Qgoir$ 时间: 2012-9-2 10:34
The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan’s debut to the world, and to be honest, this is the first time I finished an English novel. It drives me into a fancy world where I can find a dramatic China, coiling her body between the tradition and the modernity. Four pair of mothers and daughters being obedient or independent to the past and future, their stubbornness and the confusion between the two different cultures and their identities is quite touching.
Unfortunately, it seems that the world manifested by Cheng Naishan etc. is relatively different form the world Amy Tan created. I did not realize the problem until I picked up their translation text just for scanning, after the reading of the English version . The problem blooms so seriously that I am beginning to doubt the contemporary translation circumstance in China, combining other reading experiences I had before.
As the translation theories have developed rapidly since the 20th century, the source text is no longer unchangeable. Translators’ subjectivity is taken into consideration in common discussion, “equivalence” generally replaces “faithfulness” as the standard of translation, and “Catford’s linguistic theory of translation and Eugene Nida’s dynamic equivalence are the two most representative theories concerning “equivalence”. “Their theories on the one hand admit the status of the author and the original text, and on the other hand they also confront the personal involvement of translator in his or her work.”(陈燕敏，13) But how to keep balance between the authors’ authorities and translators’ freedom is not an immediately solvable question concerning both translation theorists and translators.
I chose Part 1, chapter 2 AN-MEI HSU: Scar and Part 2, chapter 7 ROSE HSU JORDAN: Half and Half (mainly because these two chapters constitute half of one mother-daughter story: AN-MEI HSU and ROSE HSU JORDAN’ story) to show the pessimistic statistics. 53 phrases and sentences are not completely translated into Chinese, including 2 entire paragraphs deleted ; 57 Paraphrases, 33 alterations with less changing of meaning while 20 “modifications” with sharp changing in significance and 4 changes in sentence patterns; 12 creations, which the author actually does not mention at all.
1. The Missing Organs.
The missing tissues can be easily fond throughout the whole book, some are acceptable:
ST ：Mrs. Jordan also had a few words to say. Ted had casually invited me to a family picnic, the annual clan reunion held by the polo fields in Golden Gate Park. (Tan, Amy, 117, emphasis added)
This sentence is taken from ROSE HSU Jordan’s explanation on the attitude towards Rose and Ted’s relationship from Ted’s mother. Here the “clan reunion” and “by the polo field” is not stated in the Chinese translation, but it has less effort on purport expression, thus this deletion is permissible.
But some are quite serious:
ST: My mother did not let her chin fall down. She walked back to the beach and put the Bible down. She picked up the thermos and teacup and walked to the water’s edge. Then she told me that the night before she had reached back into her life, back when she was a girl in China, and this is what she had found.
“I remember a boy who lost his hand in a firecracker accident,” she said. “I saw the shreds of this boy’s arm, his tears, and then I heard his mother’s claim that he would grow back another hand, better than the last. This mother said she would pay back an ancestral debt ten times over. She would use a water treatment to soothe the wrath of Chu Jung, the three-eyed god of fire. And true enough the next week this boy was riding a bicycle, both hands steering a straight course past my astonished eyes!”
And then my mother became very quiet. She spoke again in a thoughtful, respectful manner.
“An ancestor of ours once stole water from a sacred well. Now the water is trying to steal back. We must sweeten the temper of the Coiling Dragon who lives in the sea. And then we must make him loosen his coils from Bing by giving him another treasure he can hide.”
My mother poured out tea sweetened with sugar into the teacup, and threw this into the sea. And then she opened her fist. In her palm was a ring of watery blue sapphire, a gift from her mother, who had died many years before. This ring, she told me drew coveting stares from women and made them inattentive to the children they guarded so jealously. This would make the Coiling Dragon forgetful of Bing. She threw the ring into the water. (Tan, 128~129, emphasis added)
This short passage is taken from ROSE HSU JORDAN‘s memory on AN-MEI HSU’s effort to get her son, Bing back from drowning in the sea. Obviously the translators rewrite the plot here, completely delete the story which AN-MEI told her daughter and the prayer she said before the symbolic ceremony. All the legends and stories told by the mothers in the frame tales create a mysterious and unfamiliar scene of China for Chinese readers, offering ways to know how the author understands and interprets her native culture and to glimpse what the image of China it is in the eyes’ of Chinese Americans. The stories may be too eccentric to be translated, but the abridgement diminishes the sentimental expression and reduced the vivid story to a quite pale narrative.
2. The Pathological Blood Vessels
The pathological blood vessels are most common problems in the translation text, due to the abuse of free translation. The method of paraphrase does help the local readers comprehend foreign text better, but sometimes it will lead to transformations of significance:
ST: “An-mei,” she (Popo) murmured, now more gently. “Your dying clothes are very plain. They are not fancy, because you are still a child. If you die, you will have a short life and you will still owe your family a debt. Your funeral will be very small. Our mourning time for you will be very short.” (Tan, 47, emphasis added)
This is from AN-MEI HSU’s childhood memory when she is dying. Cheng comprehends Popo’s words “Our mourning time for you will be very short.” as “we will forget you soon (我们会很快把你忘掉的).” This might be a way of interpreting, but “mourning time” can also represent the special period that Chinese people mourn for the defunct family members, usually will be seven days or forty-nine days, even three years for parents in ancient China. A short mourning time, as Popo explained in the text, is because kids owed family a debt when they died young. It is a common tradition that the funeral for seniority is more magnificent than funeral for children in China; whereas “We will forget you soon” lose all the information above and simply bring an extra emotional influence that AN-MEI’s relatives in Ningpo are unconcerned with her, she is not even worth a usual mourning time, thus a more negative portrait for Popo is furbished.
Another paraphrase case, which is related to rhetoric:
ST: “Ted, if you want me to go, I’ll go.” (Said Rose)
And it was as if something snapped in him (referred Ted). “How the hell did we ever get married? Did you just say ‘I do’ because the minister said ‘repeat after me’? What would you have done with your life if I had never married you? Did it ever occur to you?”
This was such a big leap in logic, between what I said and what he said, that I thought we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.
But now I realize that Ted knew what he was saying all long. He wanted to show me the rift. Because later that evening he called from Los Angeles and said he wanted a divorce. (Tan, 120, emphasis added)
This part is taken from ROSE HSU JORDAN’s narration on the quarrel between Ted and her, starting from Ted’s querying if Rose wanted to come along with him to Los Angeles for a dermatology course. What the narrator (Rose) mentioned here “This was such a big leap in logic” is referred to “between what I said and what he said”, because just before Ted‘s roaring they were talking about Rose’s decision on going or not, a casual topic at home but suddenly Ted started to roar about how did they get married; while the “big leap” in translation text is point to “our behaviors lead to the crash of relationship”. The denotation of the words has been switched.
The simile which narrator used to describe the broken relationship shrink to something not so pathetic in the translation: “unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.” is translated into “finally lead to the divorce (最终导致了这场婚姻的破裂。)”. “The dangerous chasm” implies that the marriage is in danger, but expressing it as a declaration causes it to lose so much poetic imagination and sentiment within the expressions. The reason to make this change in rhetoric seems unreasonable and doubtable, since from my point of view, it is beyond the essentials.
And two instances of sentence pattern transformation:
ST 1: And when I say that it is certainly true, that our marriage is over, I know what else she will say: “Then you must save it.” (Tan, 116, emphasis added)
ST 2：I see him standing by the wall, safe, calling to my father, who looks over his shoulder toward Bing. How glad I am that my father is going to watch him for a while! (Tan, 125, emphasis added)
In the first case, instead of the original declarative sentence “Then you must save it.”, an interrogative sentence “It can not be saved at all? / You can not save it at all? (一点也没法挽救了？) ” takes position; While in the second case, the translators use a declarative sentence “I’ m glad that my father is going to watch him for a while. (我很高兴爸能代我看管他一阵。) ” to replace the exclamatory sentence “How glad I am that my father is going to watch him for a while!”. Generally speaking, various intimations and emotions can be touched though different sentence patterns, to translate the sentence patterns which author used to describe certain feelings is not that difficult to do, then why the translators choose to change them remains a query from the readers .
3. The Tumors.
The translators’ subjectivity continues functioning, besides cutting off and replacing, they create some brand-new expressions to demonstrate their abilities:
ST 1: After her prayer, her faith was so great that she saw him, three times, waving to her from just beyond the first wave. “Nale!” ----There! And she would stand straight as a sentinel, until three times her eyesight failed her and Bing turned into a dark spot of churning seaweed. (Tan, 128)
ST 2: “He’s there,” she said firmly. She pointed to the jagged wall across the water. “I see him. He is in a cave, sitting on a little step above the water. He is hungry and a little cold, but he has learned now not to complain too much.” (Tan, 129)
It seems that the beautiful sentences translators add on should not be blamed; it creates a more vivid scene and reinforces the charm of the plot. However, translation is not an activity of composing; translators should not over exaggerate while some small creating methods are acceptable.
After the author completes the book with the last drop of ink and sends it to the publisher, the work should be considered as a lively creature; nothing can be easily cut off or added on. However, the translation cannot be done only though literal translating, multiple strategies and methods such as free translating, proper deletion and some appropriate transformations do perfect the translation text and make it easier for readers to understand. As Cheng Naishan states in the postscript of the 2006 version: “both literal translation and paraphrase strategies are adopted in order to cater for Chinese readers’ habits and preserve the jocoseness and American humor in the original text. This version has deleted some explanations which aim to help foreign readers who don’t know Chinese traditions too much. (为了照顾中国读者的阅读习惯，尽量保留原作的诙谐和美国式的幽默，在翻译过程中，直译与意译相结合；这个版本删除了一些作者原为照顾不了解中国习俗的外国读者而作的一些注释)” (程乃珊, 260) But if this is the case, the Chinese culture in author’s mind will be blurred and the world author created will be distorted, compare to the original text.
Since the translator’s subjectivity involves a large number of factors, as Meng Xiaoqing puts, “the translator’s ideology, thinking patterns, aesthetic-orientation, empathy, and personal experiences and so on. It is related to circumstances more individual in nature such as one’s origin, race, education, gender, age, social class, sexual orientation, political convictions, moral values, religious beliefs, personal experiences, relationships and interests, all factors contributing to the positional of the translator” (Meng Xiaoqing, 22)，responsible translators should be prudent to use the strategies and methods (especially when translating the foreign books into native language.) for assuring the original meaning and tastes.
References
Graham, D. Edward. “Unquiet on the Western Front: The ‘Orientalism’ of Contemporary Chinese-American Women Writers.” Oriental Prospects: Western Literature and the Lure of the East. Ed. C.C. Barfoot and Theo d' Haen. Havard: Rodopi B.V.Editions, 1998
Meng, Xiangqi. Translator, subjectivity and Translation Norms. Beijing: Beijing Language and Culture University, 2004.
Schell, Orville. “Your Mother Is in Your Bones.” New York Times 19 March, 1989.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
陈燕敏. Back Translation and Reproduction of Author’s Style in Chinese American Literature----A Case Study of Joy Luck Club. 上海：上海外国语大学学位论文库，2009.
谭恩美. 程乃珊、贺培华、严映薇（译）.《喜福会》. 上海：上海译文出版社，2006.
肖薇.《異質文化語境下的女性書寫——海外華人女性寫作比較研究》. 成都：四川出版集團巴蜀書社，2005.
来自: 豆瓣作者: 已注小$ 时间: 2012-9-2 10:34
The most important scene in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan is the death of An-mei’s mother (Tan 270). After realizing that her status in WuTsing’s house was diminishing, Mother committed suicide. This led the superstitious WuTsing, afraid that Mother’s ghost would return, to give An-mei a high status in the house.
Mother’s change of character made her death significant. On their first meeting, she told An-mei to passively accept her fate. However, Mother later found being a Fourth Wife to be humiliating as the overbearing control of the Second Wife was inevitable. She refused to suffer in silence. Just a few days before her planned suicide, Mother changed from a timid and traditional wife into a strong willed woman who ingeniously used her death as a weapon to secure An-mei’s future.
The setting played an important role in this scene. The story took place in a traditional male-dominated Chinese society where women were taught to be meek and to conceal their pain. When Mother was raped by and then forced to marry WuTsing, she did not protest but instead left her home to avoid bringing disgrace to her family. As a third concubine she accepted her fate and desired nothing for herself. However, as Mother’s status deteriorated with the arrival of Fifth Wife, she began to worry for her daughter.
The death of Mother was a touching scene because it gave her daughter power and independence. The story was told by An-mei to show that she had been impacted by her mother’s sacrifice since childhood. She knew it was useless to cry because that would only fill up someone else’s joy, instead, An-mei crushed the fake pearl necklace in front of the Second Wife, and learned to shout.
来自: 豆瓣作者: 赏心$ 时间: 2012-9-2 10:34
i have seen the film of joy luck club before reading. as it is my english homework, i had to read the english edition novel of joy luck culb. i spent nearly a whole term on this book. it was the first time i finished reading an english novel with no chinese translation.therefore, when finished this bood, i was happy and pround of myself. however ,when i thought of my enlish homwork, all the happiness had gone. my homework was that making a comparison between the film and the novel of joy luck club. oh, my god! how can i finished this difficult homework? i didn't konw how to say the similarities or the differences between the film and the novel in english. i hoped someone can help me, but nobody would help me except myself. althought both the film and the novel gave me deep expression,and if allowed me expressed my feeling in chinese, i was confident that i would has a lot to say. unfortunately,i must expessed my thoughts in english. but how poor my english is ! what my view of joy luck?
i don't know, i just want to ask who can help me finish my homework, so i can expressed my view very well!help me , my god ! who can help me !
PS.
电影我也看了，说来也巧。那时自己也就十多岁还不懂事的时候，在外出的旅社里看电视（天气很冷没法出去）正好CCTV6就放了这部片子。当时不能完全看懂，但是却是一部无法忘记的电影。然后就开始一直找，才知道是有这么一本书，看了书，后来又看了电影。说实话，电影感觉没有书的好，但是我在这里还是要感谢这部电影，如果没有它让我少年时如此深刻的记忆，也许在人生中我会少许多东西。
首先我看到的是电影《喜福会》的海报。从这风格里就猜得出来，像一切90年代的华裔一样，淳朴，热心，厚道的风格。没有后来电影海报里常见的特技，没有夸张的突出主体人物，只是淡淡的加入几句评语。而这些评语也不似后来《纽约时报》的书评那样为了讨好每一本不坏的书而绞尽脑汁，只是单纯的，最初始的赞美罢了。One of the year's best films. Two thumbs up, way up. An extraordinary film.
这本书讲的是在美国加州旧金山中国城的四对母女的故事。母亲都是生在旧中国，49年以前移民到美国的。女儿都是在美国出生和成长的ABC（American Born Chinese). 书中讲了很多中国和美国的文化冲突的事情，母亲的中国文化是如何影响女儿，而女儿身上的美国文化又如何反作用于母亲的。不过因为跟我差着一代，感觉母亲记忆中的那个中国，跟我自己熟悉的中国已经差了很远了。那是一个我这样在红旗下出生，红旗下长大的人很难理解的时代。那种有些带迷信色彩的中国文化，总给我一种陌生感。历史就是另一个国度。中国在不同时代的人眼里居然有那么大的差异，也很有趣。而更有趣的是，虽然我不太同意母亲们对中国文化的理解，但我却很清楚的知道，这些的确是中国文化的一部分，那种神秘和万物有灵，人和自然的交融，的确是中国文化独有的特性。