A cultural analysis of Disney's Mulan with respect to translation

Abstract

Taking as the object of study Disney's Mulan in English and Chinese, this paper first introduces the Chinese culture borrowed in the film. Then, it explores cultural deformations in the English version and cultural restorations and reformulations in the Chinese version. Cultural deformation is a kind of cultural borrowing of precious treasures of world culture in which cultural distortion usually occurs to varying degrees due to employment of various adapting strategies such as addition, omission, specification, explicitation and alteration. There are content deformation and linguistic deformation in Mulan. Cultural restoration means that cultural deformations produced by cultural adaptations come back to their original forms. Cultural reformulation means modifications of the source culture in the receiving culture and re-modifications of the modified culture when it is introduced back to the source culture in a certain form, such as translation. Finally, this paper discusses the intra-cultural and intercultural transfer in The Mulan Ballad and Disney's Mulan, pointing out the merits and demerits of Disneyfication and transculturation.

Notes

^1. The English version of the film is available at http://www.scifiscripts.com/cartoon/mulan.txt and the Chinese version is by Tu Weizhong with both dubbed and subtitled versions on the VCDs of the film published by China Audiovisual Press and distributed by Thakral Co., Ltd.

^2. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulan

^3. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Mulan

^4. See http://baike.baidu.com/view/134316.htm

^5. See http://baike.baidu.com/view/4025.htm

^6. See http://www.dhjbw.com

^7. See http://dict.bing.com.cn/#matchmaker

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chuanmao Tian

Chuanmao Tian is a professor of translation at Yangtze University, Jingzhou, Hubei, People's Republic of China, with a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics. He is also a special researcher in the National Management Institute, a director of the Hubei Provincial Translators' Association and an advanced member of the Translators' Association of China. His area of interest is translation theory and practice. He has published over 10 articles concerning translation in major scholarly journals at home and abroad, such as the Chinese Translators Journal (2000/2012), Across Languages and Cultures (2010) and Perspectives: Studies in Translatology (2008/2010). He is now doing his PhD thesis in Tarragona, Spain.

Caixia Xiong

Caixia Xiong is a lecturer of English at Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China with a Bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature. Her area of interest is English teaching and translation studies. She has published several articles concerning translation and English teaching in China's scholarly journals, such as Science & Technology for Development (2007).