Translation of Human Existence in Timothy Mo’s Sour Sweet

Abstract

In Sour Sweet, Timothy Mo tells a story about a Chinese family’s struggle in the UK. After experiencing a serious of cultural conflicts, among the three family members Chen, Lily and Mui, only Lily achieves a delicate balance. After defining the process of establishing oneself in a new environment as a kind of translation, this paper applies André Lefevere’s thoughts to study the three characters’ different responses to the cultural conflicts, analyzes how different strategies adopted affect each character’s translation, and explains why does or doesn’t he/she translates himself/herself successfully.