Creative Translation of Cultural Hybridity in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Rewriting of Fa Mulan

【Abstract】Kingston’s version of Fa Mulan reveals her personal experiences through the reconstruction of myths， legends， and ‘talk stories’. Kingston transformed Chinese culture into American life rather than recount Chinese history or legend. By analyzing the creative and hybrid cultural translation presented in Kingston’s The White Tigers， the essay discusses that her reconfiguration of the legend of Mulan can be regarded as a hybrid product of multicultural interactions.

【Key words】cultural hybridity; rewriting; Maxine Hong Kingston; Fa Mulan

【作者簡介】夏华敏（1981.09-），女，白族，云南大理人，楚雄师范学院地理科学与旅游管理学院讲师，硕士，研究方向：旅游应用英语。

The Woman Warrior has became an instant bestseller since 1976 after its publication， because Maxine Hong Kingston deals with stories of growth in individuals and among generations in two different cultures.  Frequent and creative use of Chinese elements in this work， especially reconfiguration of the legend of Fa Mulan in The White Tigers， allows Kingston to wander freely between Chinese and American culture.

Undoubtedly， Kingston’s Mulan is hardly intelligible if it is read just as an American tale or a fantasy， nor as distortions or mistranslations of Chinese history and culture. She has done a kind of creative cultural translation from Chinese cultural stories into American culture. Due to her limited mastery of Chinese and the influence of mainstream American culture， she learns Chinese culture in an American way. Chinese traditional thoughts and stories can not be completely handed down and they have already been transformed and imagined to some extent. The imagined Chinese culture is actually a hybridity of two cultures and formed the Chinese American culture. Meanwhile， ancestral Chinese culture acts as a source text which is directly or indirectly rewritten and represented in the form of literary writing. To this extent， translation here is not an equivalent transformation between two languages， rather a more complicated process of transplantation and transferring of two cultures in unequal position， which is defined as cultural translation in this thesis.

According to Han Zimman， the hybridity can be presented in the source texts invarious forms. It could be the hybridity of two or more cultural images， the hbridity of different languages， and the hybridity of different types of writing and genres （Han 2002： 55）. Beside the most typical language hybridity in hybrid text， cultural hybridity is also obvious in Kingston’s rewriting.

Kingston’s new story originated from “The Ballad of Fa Mu Lan”， it tells of a woman named Fa Mu Lan. At the beginning of Kingston’s story， Mu Lan leaves her parents at the age of seven and happens to get a chance to come to the white tigers， learning such skills as martial arts and war strategies for fourteen years so that she can “learn how to fight barbarians and be remembered by the Han people for her dutifulness” （Kingston 1989： 27）. And she decided to hide her traditional role as a female and become a male fighter is aimed at fighting outside threats for the family rather than against patriarchal oppression. After fourteen years’ learning， Fa Mu Lan becomes a woman master of intelligence， strength and fighting skills. In the end， she has not only fulfilled her filial duty by avenging the wrongs done to her family by the baron， but also plays the role of a champion of the Han people in fighting barbarians and bandits. Back home， the woman warrior meets with warm welcome from her parents and the villagers “make a legend about her perfect filialness” （Kingston 1989： 45）. From this perspective， we can see that Mu Lan’s learning martial arts and fighting outside， to some extent， are ways for self realization and self fulfillment.

Fa Mulan in Kingston’s work is a perfectly hybrid figure. （Cao 2008：33）The hybrid Chinese elements or hybrid way of expressing Chinese culture in Kingston’s reconfiguration do not argue for an appreciation of Chinese traditional culture nor advocate for mainstream values in America， but reflect the diaporic experience of Chinese Americans， especially women and their desire to reconstruct new identities so they may be recognized fully participating members of both their ethnic community and the wider American dominant culture. Hybridity of two cultures enables the hybrid identity to emerge so as to create bicultural existence to a new Chinese-American culture.

References：

[1]Han， Ziman. Literary Translation and Hybridity[J]. China Translation，2002（5）：54-58.