On The Translating Of Chinese Culture-loaded Words In Fortress Besieged From The Perspective Of Functionalism

China is world famous for its splendid culture and long history. With the acceleration of cross-cultural communication and globalization, it becomes increasingly important and necessary to introduce Chinese traditional culture to the world. It is well-known that language is the carrier of culture. It is necessarily marked with rich cultural deposits and striking national features. As an important activity of cross-cultural communication, translation serves as the bridge for exchanges between readers from different cultural backgrounds. In this sense, the translation of the culture-loaded words has been the difficult part in inter-cultural communication.Fortress Besieged, the masterpiece by Mr. Qian Zhongshu, is regarded as one of the greatest works in modern Chinese literature. It is full of couture-loaded words, and they appear as a unique highlight of this work in addition to its humor and satire. The English version co-translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao is so far the most accepted one. Generally speaking, this version well mirrors the original contents and style, though some criticism toward this translation could still be heard.This thesis aims to investigate the translation of culture-loaded words in this work from the perspective of functionalist theories. In comparison with traditional translation theories, functionalist theories transfer translation’s emphasis to its purpose and function, thus opening a new view for translators. In this sense, translation is regarded as a purposeful activity, which should be adjusted to satisfy the needs and expectations of the target readers. It is meanwhile worth researching and discussing whether functionalist theories could be directive and applicable to literary translation.Based on functionalist theories and skopostheorie in particular, the author discusses how to reasonably deal with the cultural elements in literary translation by analyzing the translation of several Chinese culture-loaded words or phrases in Fortress Besieged. Through the detail analysis, the thesis firstly summarizes how to reasonably adopt different translation strategies in order to direct the translation of Chinese culture-loaded words. Secondly, the author makes comments on several examples of culture-loaded words in the English version Fortress Besieged, and puts forward some suggestions on how to translate Chinese culture-loaded words more reasonably and accurately.This research would be a supplement to the translation of Chinese culture-loaded words in literary works and concludes the direction of functionalist theory to literary translation. Besides, the well translated cultural expressions and phrases will promote the cross-cultural communication of readers from different cultural backgrounds, thus to accelerate traditional Chinese culture to develop forward.