A Study On International Students’ Reception Of The English Translation Of Agricultural Proverbs Related To The Twenty-four Solar Terms

The twenty-four solar terms are the testimony of the development of astronomy,agriculture and calendar in China and the treasure of traditional Chinese culture.Promoted by the concept of "culture going out",24 solar terms and other important elements of Chinese traditional culture have renewed their vitality.Agricultural proverbs related to 24 solar terms have also been translated into English and introduced to the English world.The acceptance of these proverbs in the English world is closely related not only to the quality of the translated text,but also to the readers as the hub of literary works and cultural communication.Based on the acceptance theory,this paper conducts a questionnaire survey to explore the possible factors affecting the acceptance of the English translation of 24 solar terms-related proverbs by overseas students in China.The first chapter introduces the research background,purpose and significance.Chapter two first reviews the history of proverb translation and points out that the study of proverb translation mainly includes three aspects:translation principles,translation methods and the influence of cultural differences between China and the West on proverb translation.Secondly,this paper reviews the studies on the translation of 24 solar terms into English,and points out that there are few studies on the translation of 24 solar terms into English at present.Finally,the relevant research on the acceptability of translation is introduced.Based on the questionnaires used in previous studies,combined with the translation quality evaluation criteria proposed by Li Xiaomin and MuLei,and taking comprehensibility,expression and style of translation as the factors affecting the acceptability of translation,this paper develops a Likert scale scale 5 for English translation acceptability of proverbs.The third chapter introduces the research design,including the subjects,contents and process of the investigation.The author chooses overseas students in China as the subjects of the survey,which is divided into three parts,including their personal background information,their knowledge of Chinese cultural background and their acceptance of the English translation of proverbs related to 24 solar terms.Questionnaires are distributed and collected both offline and online.Finally,the data of the questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS 18.0.The fourth chapter describes the results of the questionnaire survey.This chapter is divided into three summaries:personal information,knowledge background and evaluation of the target text.According to the data,94 foreign students in China participated in the survey,including 35 males and 59 females,aged between 18 and 25,91 with bachelor’s degree and above.More than 70%of the respondents chose the option of good English proficiency and 50%chose the option of good Chinese proficiency.All the respondents had different understanding of Chinese culture and agriculture,and only 9 of them knew about the 24 solar terms.In the five selected sentences,the average score of the fourth sentence is the highest(3.91),and that of the first sentence is the lowest(3.67).In the fifth chapter,correlation analysis,t-test and variance test are used to quantitatively analyze the data.The results show that:(1)to a certain extent,there are significant differences between the reader’s educational background and the reader’s acceptance;secondly,there is no positive correlation between the English level and the reader’s acceptance;thirdly,there are significant positive correlations between the comprehensibility of the translated text,the expression of the translated text and the style of the translated text and the reader’s acceptance.In the last chapter,through summarizing and analyzing the readers’ feedback on translation evaluation,it is found that the overall acceptability of the translation is good,and the factors such as lack of cultural background,grammatical errors and ambiguity of word meaning have certain effects on the reader’s acceptance.In view of this situation,combined with the characteristics of proverbs,the author puts forward some suggestions for cultural transmission.