Abstract Beijing local-color literature is the literature of Beijing city and people, and has an important place in the 20th century Chinese literature schools. The narrative of Beijing local-color literature is characterized by “Beijingness”, and is a reservoir of rich Beijing local culture. A number of Beijing Local-Color writings have been translated into English and published at home and abroad, which started the translation studies on language and translation strategies of its English versions. Since the 1990s, the cultural turn of translation studies has initiated the multi-dimensional research by integrating linguistics, literature and cultural studies with translation studies, and helped formulate the cultural focus in the translation studies of Beijing local-color literature. In the context of cultural translation studies, a literary work is a kind of cultural product. The narrative, style and space in Beijing local-color literature are invested with profound Beijing local culture. The accurate representation of the cultural Beijingness embedded in Beijing local-color literature is an important standard to evaluate the translation. Whether the translated version conforms to the literary tradition of the audience determines its readability. Therefore, the cultural affinity of literary traditions, styles and narrative techniques in the English version of Beijing local-color literature is the focus, for it judges the accurate representation and acceptability in audience’s culture. The stylistic and narrative affinity is the equivalence of discourse in translations, and functions as the important strategies in the reproduction of cultural Beijingness. With the cultural globalization, loanwords from Chinese into English offer a new translation strategy for literary translators. Moreover, Beijing local-color literature is also the literature of cities, and the spatial writing functions both as narrative and as a way of spatial production. The landscape setting and the spatial narratives in Beijing local-color literature are a silent discourse of Beijingness, presenting a peculiar Beijing local culture. The narrative point of view and the spatial coherence in the spatial writing as a significant way to reproduce the Beijingness are the core of the translation studies of Beijing local-color literature. Therefore, the spatial writing in literary translation needs to acquire a coherent equivalence between “the signified” and “the signifier” to attain the accurate reproduction of spatial Beijingness in English versions. Additionally, as national identity is the soul of Beijing local-color literature, the translator’s decolonized strategies in translation may facilitate the accurate re-creation of national culture and eliminate the cultural misreading stemming from Orientalism. The translators’ precise representation of national culture and national trauma in Beijing local-color literature manifests their cultural awareness, which boosts the “going global” strategy for Chinese culture in literary translations. The translators’ cultural awareness and precise re-creation of national identity are, therefore, of vital importance in the translation studies of Beijing local-color literature. To sum up, in the context of cultural translation, the translation studies of Beijing local-color literature have integrated literature, translation and cultural studies to explore the multi-dimensional cultural representation in translation studies, and to further broaden the horizons of literary translation studies.
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