Towards Strategies For Translation Of Chinese Shuyu Into English

Shuyu (Chinese idioms,熟语), as cream of Chinese, reflect China's long history and brilliant culture. Owing to their conciseness in structure and richness in meaning, they are frequently utilized in daily life and literary works. However, it is their concise structure and rich meaning that cause much difficulty in translating them. As Chinese Shuyu are intimately associated with Chinese culture, the key to translation of Chinese Shuyu, to a great extent, lies in how to deal with Chinese culture involved.As two important translation strategies, foreignization and domestication are most often employed by translators. The writer of this thesis centers around these two translation strategies to explore the translation of Chinese Shuyu. First of all, the thesis briefly reviews the previous studies on strategies for translation of Chinese Shuyu and recalls the definitions of foreignization and domestication as well as debates over them. Next, it discusses the definition and features of Chinese Shuyu. Then, with abundant examples, the thesis investigates two main translation strategies of Chinese Shuyu—foreignization and domestication. The former is divided into transplantation method and transplantation with notes; the latter can be fulfilled by substituting source language (SL) images, by abandoning SL images and by borrowing. Finally, other strategies such as loan translation and a combination of foreignization and domestication are mentioned.In the light of the advantages it exhibits, in the process of translating Chinese Shuyu, foreignization strategy should be employed as frequently as possible. However, when foreignization is not feasible, Domestication strategy should be resorted to and sometimes a combination of both is needed. The study is carried out for the purpose of offering some insights into the study and practice of translation of Chinese Shuyu and helping translators improve translation of Chinese Shuyu into English.