A Report On The Translation Of Casual Expressions Of Idle Feeling:the Yanxi Section(Excerpts)

The source text is excerpted from Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling,written by Li Yu,a famous litterateur and dramatist of the Qing Dynasty.Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling consists of eight parts,discussing various phenomena in art and life,such as opera,garden,architecture,flower,furniture,food,etc.The source text is about Li Yu’s insight into Chinese opera,specifically,about the playwriting,singing,speaking,costume,accompaniment and the like.The source text contains abundant information about Chinese culture and it’s difficult to deliver some cultural information.To explore how to translate cultureloaded information,the report classifies these translation difficulties on the basis of Nida’s classification of culture-loaded terms.In addition,the report adopts Appiah’s “Thick Translation” to analyze the translation of culture-loaded terms.Appiah’s “Thick Translation” suggests that translation should be located in a rich cultural and linguistic context.To achieve this goal,translators can add annotations and accompanying glosses to help target readers better understand the source text.The source text contains a great number of culture-loaded terms that have no equivalents in target culture,so the translator adopts different translation methods to explain and provide the cultural information,such as literal translation plus footnote,literal translation plus endnote,free translation and transliteration plus illustration etc.This translation task not only plays a certain role in the spread of Chinese opera,but also explores the feasibility of Thick Translation in classical Chinese renderings.