The Construction of Cultural Identity of the Minority : The Domestication and the Foreignization of Chinese Image in The Woman Warrior

Abstract

Chinese Americans are a group which shows the feature of cultural hybridity, and The Woman Warrior describes the life experience of a Chinese girl in a foreign land and her imagination of her distant homeland. From the perspective of post-colonialism, cultural identity is gradually constructed and changed. The Woman Warrior translates some Chinese images into English shows the construction of cultural identity which is different from the mainstream culture. The translation strategies adopted by the novel can be divided into domesticating translation and foreignizing translation. The two translation methods have different characteristics and play different roles in the construction of cultural identity. This article adopts post-colonial theory, cultural identity theory and translation strategy theory to analyze the characteristics of domesticating translation and foreignizing translation in The Woman Warrior, and explores translation strategies that are more conducive to the construction of cultural identity through comparison. Finally, it is concluded that foreignizing translation is a more effective translation strategy under the premise of constructing cultural identity.