On The Translation Of Chinese Vogue Words From The Cultural Perspective

The past fifty years have recorded the breakthroughs taking place in China which have overwhelmed the whole world. During the period, China has precipitated its local culture and at the same time withstood the impact of foreign cultures. Back to earlier days, when May 4th movement swept China with a great deal of exotic ideas and emancipated people's thoughts; then to the opening up and reform policy, which brought in tremendous economic benefits as well as cultural interaction and strengthened the cultural cooperation and exchange to the most ever between China and the west; till the recent Olympic Games, China has officially put itself in the center of the international stage and shown the world its splendid wonder. Leaps in economic power and elevation of international profile have sent China and its culture to the express way of globalization. Now Chinese culture finds itself in the center of global attention. It interests an increasing number of foreigners and makes them aware of Chinese culture consciously. And more and more Chinese elements can catch our eyes and ears in western culture. Vogue words, as the intensified reflection of a society and its culture, demonstrate contemporary pop culture and the trends with depth and vividness. Therefore, the translation of vogue words has become a vital approach for foreigners to walk close to Chinese culture. That a wide range of people who accept vogue words has deep meanings and reasons.This dissertation compares Chinese and English languages and their cultures by emphasizing the hypotaxis of Chinese and syntaxis of English and reflecting high context of Chinese culture and low context of western culture and probing into the discrepancy between Chinese thinking mode and western thinking mode in order to dig further out the formation and characteristics of vogue words and the cultural elements behind the words. The focus is given to the characteristics and culture of Chinese vogue words and the translatability of Chinese vogue words from the perspective of Susan Bassnett'cultural translation theory and Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory and reader's response theory. This dissertation aims at revealing social and cultural possessions of Chinese vogue words and suggesting feasible strategies and techniques for translating them into English through analyzing of the existing translation of Chinese vogue words and finding out the problems in the translation and their causes.This paper probes into major sources and formation of current Chinese vogue words and elaborate on their respective characteristics. Previous translation of Chinese vogue words into English is measured by translation theories in this paper in order to find out major problems and their key causes, serving the ultimate purpose of putting forward translation strategies and techniques in allusion to different types of vogue words.This dissertation systematically summarizes the characteristics of Chinese vogue words and the translation strategies and techniques for them based on former study. At the same time, it develops its own unique thoughts and puts them into practice. The examples cited in the dissertation represent various problems respectively. They are typical and are pointed to special problems. The combination and utilization of Susan Bassnett's cultural translation theory and Nida's functional equivalence theory are objective without bias. The deficiency of this dissertation lies in that the translation of the vogue words are not authoritative enough and the suggested translations meets difficulty in standardization. To sum up, this dissertation contributes limited efforts and tentative innovation to the field of Chinese vogue words and their translation in the hope of forging ahead the field in the slightest way.