鍾芭‧拉希莉(Jhumpa Lahiri)的小說《同名之人》(The Namesake, 2003)被視為近年來探討移民問題深刻的作品之一，書中描述移民家庭的新舊拉扯與兩代之間的文化難題。在此跨世代與跨文化背景下，拉希莉以文化翻譯者的角度述說移民過程中的困境、糾葛。 本論文將透過對於當代翻譯理論的引用，探討拉希莉如何運用翻譯策略書寫《同名之人》並論述拉希莉如何以翻譯為主要概念開展書中角色的離散經驗與身份認同。 第一章略述《同名之人》的梗概、介紹其相關評論與說明本論文理論架構。第二章藉由對當代翻譯理論的發展回顧建立對翻譯的重新認知；同時，也將詳述拉希莉與其作品以及翻譯的密切性。第三章檢視離散理念，進而分析離散主體在居間性(in-betweenness)中的文化翻譯。第四章透過對身份認同的探究，釐清翻譯對於離散主體身份建構的不可或缺性。第五章重新討論翻譯與起源(the origin)的問題，並點出翻「異」的價值性所在。 / Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (2003) has been regarded as one of the most brilliant literary works that deals with immigration in recent years. In the novel, Lahiri takes the readers into a full picture of an immigration family, unfolding the hardships of preserving traditions in a new world and the conflicts of seeking roots between two generations. Writing against the background of cross-generations and that of cross-cultures, Lahiri plays the role of a cultural translator, who detailedly narrates the predicament in the process of migration. The present thesis would like to adopt translation theories to examine how Lahiri writes The Namesake through translation. In addition, the present thesis also aims to shed light on the concept of diaspora as well as the notion of identity by taking translation into consideration. Chapter One begins with the introduction of The Namesake and the methodology used in the present thesis. Chapter Two focuses on reviewing the development of translation theories and on building the interrelationship among Lahiri, Lahiri’s literary works and translation. Chapter Three concentrates on the study of diaspora and cultural translation practiced in in-betweenness. Chapter Four pays attention to the concept of identity and its association with translation. Chapter Five reconsiders the question of origin in translation and validates the value of “translating hybridity”.

S'inspirant de l'expérience récente de la migration indienne aux Etats-Unis, la fiction de Jhumpa Lahiri se demande si tant la nation que l'individu sont en mesure de revoir les termes mêmes de leur identité. Jhumpa Lahiri met l'accent sur l'adaptation à l'étranger en tant que processus de longue haleine. Car le changement ne prend pas, dans ce contexte, l'aspect d'une transformation subite ; il s'agit davantage d'une lente négociation entre une tradition surdéterminante et un futur sous-défini. Le meilleur éclairage que l'on puisse apporter à cette littérature de la diaspora, qui gagne en consistance et en légitimité avec l'avènement de la mondialisation, est offert par les outils de la critique postcoloniale. Bien qu'elle soit issue d'un contexte politique, cette école de pensée trouve sa pertinence dans la façon qu'elle a de poser les problèmes afférant à la possibilité de surmonter un passé conflictuel. Comment accepter l'étranger en soi ? Que faire de cette culture qui n'offre pas d'autre choix que celui de la capitulation ? Dans quelle mesure peut-on imaginer une identité où les conflits nés de valeurs contradictoires seraient ramenés à leur plus simple expression ? Notre essai consiste à découvrir de quelle manière le déplacement dû à l'exil induit une série de stratégies de préservation et de transformations identitaires. En dernier ressort, nous nous interrogerons sur les retombées de la conception lahirienne de l'identité, puisque cette romancière semble considérer que les racines et les traditions ne sont que d'une toute relative utilité lorsque l'on se trouve en terre étrangère.

My paper examines how American authors of the South Asian Diaspora (Indian-American or South Asian American) can be read 1) as simply American and 2) without regard to ethnicity. I develop this argument using American authors Jhumpa Lahiri, a first generation American of Bengali-Indian descent, and Bharati Mukherjee, an American of Bengali-Indian origin. I borrow from Deepika Bahri's materialist aesthetics in postcolonialism (in turn borrowed from members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory) and include theoretical insights from Rey Chow, Graham Huggan, and R. Radhakrishnan regarding multiculturalism, identity politics, and diaspora studies. Huggan and Radhakrishnan's insights are especially useful because their work deals with the South Asian diaspora, in England and the United States, respectively. After setting up a theoretical framework, I critique reviews and essays that privilege hyphenated, "Indian," or "South Asian" identity, and the resultant reading paradigm that fixes these authors into an ethnic minority category. I then trace aesthetic and thematic content of short stories from both Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories to demonstrate how these stories resist this ethno-cultural pigeonholing. My analysis exposes how ethnic and multicultural identity politics supplant aesthetic criticism and transform ethno-cultural identity into an aesthetic object, even if done as a celebration of hybridity or liminality as a putatively liberating space (hyphenated identity as embodying that space). Though my purpose is not to undermine the meaningful artwork and criticism instantiated in or about the "in-between" spaces of American culture, I demonstrate that an over-emphasis on ethnicity and culture (culture "other" than the majority culture in the U.S.) in fact stifles the opening of the American literary canon. Ethnicity and culture become ways of limiting the hermeneutics available to literary criticism because they become the only ways of reading, instead of one lens through which American literature is read.