A Report On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words Of Myth Of The Model Minority(chapter 6)

The source text of this translation report is excerpted from The Myth of the Model Minority.This book fully reveals the oppression brought by racial discrimination that Asian Americans face in their daily lives.Aiming at awakening the majority of Asians to their identities and appealing to them to speak up for themselves,the authors give a lot of practical cases and elaborates on them in Chapter 6,"Acts of Resistance".Thus the translator chooses this chapter as the original text of the translation project and expects to witness more equal treatment to Asian Americans through their own effort.From the perspective of relevance theory,“optimal relevance” is considered to be the general guiding principle in translation work.In the translation practice,in order to achieve the desired results,the translator shoulders a dual responsibility.First,the translator must be able to understand the intention of the author and figure out the contextual assumptions that he or she tries to convey to the reader.Meanwhile,the translator is also expected to take the readers’ cognitive ability into full consideration and to provide them with the best contextual effect,in order to make successful the translation as a verbal communication act.Culture-loaded words(phrases)represent things and concepts that are specific to a particular culture,reflecting the social,regional features and characteristics of the times of a language.Nida classifies culture-loaded words into five categories:ecological culture-loaded words,material culture-loaded words,social culture-loaded words,linguistic culture-loaded words and religious culture-loaded words.In this report the translator first picks out culture-loaded words in the text and analyzes them under the two main principles of relevance translation theory proposed by Gutt.After that,the translator tries to analyze the guiding value of the this theory on translating culture-loaded words and how to select the appropriate translation methods.The translator hopes that the report could be an inspiration and reference for the subsequent translation practice.