A New Approach To Translation Strategies Of CSIs: Think-Aloud Protocols Study

The fact that for any case and for any moment translation mixes two or more cultures implies an important issue in cultural translation: the Culture-specific Items (CSIs) to be translated do not exist in the culture of the target language and thus do not have a context of reference for the target reader. Therefore, faced with this phenomenon, translator's intercultural manipulation provides the target readers with a wide range of translation strategies, aiming at narrowing the cultural gap between the source culture and the target culture.This thesis carries out a think-aloud protocols (TAPs) study exploring the translation processes of the translators when dealing with CSIs. In the study, the translators' translation strategies of CSIs are divided into two parts, namely the problem-solving strategies and the manipulation strategies, and are investigated separately. The small-scale investigation involves an experiment to elicit TAPs from six participants, two competent professional translators, and four advanced language students. Their TAPs are then coded and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, with regards to the problem-solving strategies and the manipulation strategies.Through data elicitation and analysis, it is generally found that the whole translation process presents a retrospective-prospective nature, in which translators adopt five basic problem-solving strategies including three basic structures and two expanded structures, and seven manipulation strategies when dealing with CSIs.In the light of present research, some suggestions are proposed for future studies in the last part of the thesis.