DOI: 10.57237/j.ssrf.2026.03.004 ISSN: 2996-1459

A Study on the Reconstruction of Tibetan Female Image in Purple Highland Barley ’s English Translation from Translator Behavior Criticism

Hu Jie
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Purple Highland Barley is a work about ethnic minorities by Tibetan writer Nyima Pendor, translated by Chinese translator Liu Yujie and American translator Stephen F. Pomroy. The novel features the Tibetan minority language and portrays the Tibetan female image represented by Dhajee. Employing Zhou Lingshun’s translator behavior theory, this study constructs a Chinese-English parallel corpus based on Purple Highland Barley and its English version for quantitative and qualitative analysis. The paper explores Dhajee’s image as a traditional Tibetan female in the rural landscape and a modern Tibetan female in the economic transition, analyzes translation methods, and condenses the image construction in intra-translation. It also studies extra-translation reasons behind the translator’s behavior from three aspects: publisher’s goals, translator’s mode, and reader’s expectations. The results show that the positive part of Dhajee’s image is retained and strengthened, while the negative part is reduced and weakened. In translation, the translators adopt conservation and substitution to preserve or emphasize Dhajee’s excellent qualities. Simultaneously, they delete Dhajee’s vulgar discourse expression and excessive obedience as an adopted daughter and appropriately weaken her dilemma at different times. The research also finds that the reconstruction of the image is mainly affected by the following reasons: the overseas communication responsibility of the national publishing house makes the reconstruction of Dhajee’s image more targeted and selective; the translators’ personal identity background and experience affect the representation of Dhajee’s image; the target readers’ expectation and the readability of the English translation adjust the methods of Dhajee’s image reconstruction.

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