On The Translation Of Material Culture-loaded Terms In Sandalwood Death From The Perspective Of Imagology

In recent years,the combination of translation studies and Imagology has become a hot topic in translation research.Imagology,as a new perspective of translation research,focuses mainly on the generation of images of “the other” in the eyes of the translator.As a new image-creator,the translator observes “the other”from the perspective of “the self” in his culture,leading to the discrepancy of the images.The mutual involvement of translation and image makes translation research attach greater importance to the cultural connotation behind the original images,which is beneficial to the in-depth development of cross-cultural communication between countries.Sandalwood Death is one of Mo’s important works.It contains numerous Chinese culture-loaded words,especially material words with Chinese characteristics in ancient times.These words are the marks of China in a certain period and their transmission in target culture plays a very important role in the image-building in the process of “going global” of Chinese culture.However,there isn?t special research on the material words of this novel yet,so this study becomes a great necessity.Based on Sandalwood Death by Goldblatt,this thesis makes the case study under the guidance of the research methods of Imagolgy,including the internal and external text analyses on the remodeling phenomenon of the original image as “the other”.It is found that the transmission and variation of the image is influenced by the hierarchical relation,collective imagination,knowledge,emotion and attitude of the translator and his culture as “the self”.Also,it is concluded that main translation methods used in the text are preserving the image by literal translation,diminishing and even deleting the image by free translation,substituting the image by adaptation,revivifying the image by idiomatic translation and foreignizing the image by transliteration.The conclusions drawn by this research have certain reference value for studying Goldblatt’s other translation work and stimulating the further reflect on cultural translation studies.