On The Reader-oriented Translation Of Cultural Factors In Literary Translation

Translation is viewed as a bridge linking two cultures. Especially literary translation aims at not only transferring the superficial semantic meaning, but also transplanting & communicating between two cultures, so "a translator of literature is actually translating culture". Cultural translation theory is the combination of translation studies and cultural studies. Along with the emergence of post-modernity in the West and the influence of cultural studies, cultural translation studies came into being. Cultural translation emphasizes how to convey in a precise way the original cultural connotation and how to interpret it from the perspective of the target culture.This thesis is a tentative study of the treatment of cultural factors in cross-cultural literary translation from the perspective of reader (Functional Equivalence). It researches on two versions of The True Story of Ah Q by. means of Nida's theory of Functional Equivalence (the operative criterion for evaluating the translation), theories of cultural translation (the basic criterion for evaluating the translation) and translation methodology (the aim of the research). One version is by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang published in 1960, and the other one is by William A. Lyell, an American Sinologist published in 1990.This thesis aims at studying how the two versions successfully cross cultural barriers, how they reconstruct and compensate cultural defaults, what role readers play in translation process, and what strategies and methods the translators employ.Through comparison and analyses on the two versions, this thesis draws some conclusions on the strategies for producing functional equivalence in cultural translation, on reader's role toward translation, and on translatability and cultural translation.