A Study Of The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In English And Russian Versions Of Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Foreignization And Domesication

Translation is a human activity with a long history. It is not only a simple shift between languages, but more a cultural communication. After the "Cultural Turn" in1970s, the focus of translation study has been gradually shifting from simple linguistic level to cultural level. As language is the carrier of culture and word is the basic unit of language, cultural-loaded words, which contain abundant cultural information, have always been the focus of translation study home and abroad. The choice of foreignization, which is closer to the source language, and domestication, which caters more to the target language, in tacking cultural differences, is especially fierce. Foreignizaition and domestication, the two translation strategy, were widely used in translation practices after being raised by Venuti in1995. However, the preference of these two strategies in the translation of literature is still hotly debated.Fortress Besieged, the only novel of Qian Zhongshu, is a great satirical novel in Chinese modern history, which is dubbed as the "New the Scholars". Receiving waves of positive feedback after being published in China, it has been translated into many languages and circulated around the world. In the novel, there are abundant cultural-loaded words, therefore, how to adopt appropriate translation strategy so as to convey the meaning of these words to the readers is the key to a successful translation. This essay is aimed to, based on previous studies in this area, from the perspective of Venuti’s Foreignization and Domestication Theory, compare the translation strategy of cultural-loaded words in English and Russian versions. The essay will also analyze the communication effects of different strategies in different languages and the reason why the translator adopted different strategies. Finally, a conclusion is reached that compared to the Russian version, the English version is more prone to foreignization. But it is superficial to judge the superiority of these two strategies separately. Instead, flexible strategies must be adopted according to translation purposes, the author’s communication intension, textual type of translation and reader’s perception level so as to maximally achieve cultural communication.