Selftranslation is a special form of translation which has an identity overlap of translators and creators. Since the translator has a greater autonomy and creative space, selftranslation works are the cycle of the translator's creation. Based on the reception theory, the paper analyses how Eileen Chang plays an active role in selftranslating her short novel Shame Amah and it is found that the translated text has lots of translation variations, which is not exactly loyal to the source text but conforms to the communicative needs of target readers.