C-E Translation Of Culture-loaded Words From The Perspective Of The Relevance Translation Theory

With the rapid development of cultural exchange between China and the western countries, more and more foreigners are greatly interested in Chinese culture. The Chinese culture-loaded words are the direct reflection of Chinese culture, thus their translation attracts much more attention in recent years.Bao Feng Zhou Yu is an outstanding work in Chinese contemporary literature. The writer, Zhou Libo has employed a large number of culture-loaded words to vividly reflect the social and cultural features of China during that particular period. The translation of these words is of great significance which is helpful for the target reader to get a better understanding of Chinese culture and thus to promote cross-cultural communication. However, due to the great linguistic and cultural differences between China and the English-speaking countries, it is very difficult for the translator to find the equivalent expressions of these culture-loaded words in English, so translating them properly is a tough challenge. Thus the author of this thesis collects the Chinese culture-loaded words from the first part of Bao Feng Zhou Yu and their corresponding English versions translated by professor Xu Mengxiong as the research object. By compiling a bilingual parallel database and employing the methods of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, the author makes a systematic research on the translation of Chinese culture-loaded words from the perspective of the Relevance Translation Theory.By careful study and analysis, some major findings can be summarized as follows:Firstly, the culture-loaded words in Bao Feng Zhou Yu are mainly related to the social culture and the linguistic culture, and this is attributed to the following reasons. On the one hand, the original novel is a literary work reflecting the Chinese Agrarian Revolution, and it is a vivid reflection of the Chinese society in that particular period. Thus, most of the culture-loaded words in this novel are related to the social culture. On the other hand, in this novel, the language expressions of the Chinese peasants are vividly depicted by the original writer, such as the dialects, the Chinese two-part allegorical sayings and so on, which are unique to the Chinese culture. Therefore, the linguistic culture-loaded words also occupy a very large proportion.Secondly, approaches of translating culture-loaded words in Bao Feng Zhou Yu include literal translation (plus annotation/explanation), free translation, transliteration (plus explanation/annotation/literal translation), substitution and omission etc. Among all these approaches, literal translation is an appropriate method to translate the Chinese culture-loaded words, and as long as the literally translated version is intelligible for the target reader in his particular cognitive environment, this approach can be adopted. While in translating the Chinese culture-loaded words with no equivalent expressions in English, free translation is an applicable method, which can explicitly bring out the original writer's intentions, and make the translated version clear to the target reader. Besides, transliteration is a suitable method to translate the culture-loaded words of proper names to achieve phonetic relevance, etc.Thirdly, in translating the culture-loaded words, the selection of the corresponding target items should be consistent with the search for optimal relevance in that particular context. With this guideline, the translator should not only pay attention to the content of the original culture-loaded words, but also take the target reader's cognitive environment and acceptance into full consideration in the translation process.