An Analysis of Textless Back Translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter

Based on acculturation theory as well as both English and Chinese texts of Fifth Chinese Daughter, this paper aims to study the textless back translation in terms of the four most typical acculturation strategies—assimilation, integration, separation and marginalization. This paper holds that assimilation and integration strategies are the mainstream regarding the textless back translation of Fifth Chinese Daughter. In translating China-themed works, the employment of assimilation strategy—a significant indicator of works for textless back translation—prevails and can be further divided into “accurate assimilation” and “imprecise assimilation” according to the degree of restoration. With regard to the translation of English-specific expressions or expressions that are unique to the English culture, the integration strategy marked by annotations and the separation strategy marked by foreignization are respectively adopted to some extent. The employment of marginalization strategy may result from either the translator’s misunderstandings or the culture gap between two cultures and should be avoided as much as possible.