Strategies For Translating Culture-Specific Items In History Of The United Netherlands

The author chooses John Motley's History of the United Netherlands as the original text,and translates it from English into Chinese.This novel depicts the history of liberation struggles of the Netherlands,which is mainly about the lengthy battle between the United Provinces and the Spanish royal powers from 1584 to 1609.During the translation practice,I find a prominent feature of the text,that is a large number of culture-specific items since the liberation struggle of Netherlands involved multiple political and religious incidents in Europe.These culture-specific items greatly added to the difficulties of translation.Culture-specific item is a common obstacle in translation practice.Whether culture-specific items have been well translated or not can to a large extent affect the overall quality of the translated text.Therefore,many scholars have conducted extensive research in this field,among which,Spanish translator Javier Franco Aixela is the most representative.He puts forward eleven strategies for translating culture-specific items,and he identifies four aspects which affect the choice of those strategies,which are very practical and helpful in relevant translation practice.Employing Aixela's strategies for translating culture-specific items,this thesis analyzes the culture-specific items in the original text of History of the United Netherlands and concludes the translation strategies used in the translation practice.Most frequently used strategies are extratextual gloss,intratextual gloss,repetition,absolute universalization and naturalization.According to the translation result,the author analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of these strategies.As for other strategies put forward by Aixela,some of them are not suitable for the translation of this text,such as orthographic adaptation,synonymy,deletion and autonomous creation.Through the translation practice of the specific text,this thesis analyzes and concludes the strengths and weaknesses as well as the applicable condition of different strategies for translating culture-specific items,with the intention to contribute to the translation studies of culture-specific items.