On Translation Of Cultural Information From The Perspective Of Susan Bassnett's Cultural Translation Theory

Since 1970s, with the rise of the school of cultural translation in the west, the scholars provided a new perspective for the translation theory. Among the scholars the most outstanding was Susan Bassnett. In 1990, she and Andre Lefevere co-edited the book Translation, History and Culture. With its publication, they put forward the cultural shift in translation studies and broke the traditional concept as well as brought the translation into a new stage. Bassnett (1990) holds that translation is the cultural functional equivalence between the source text and the target text. Therefore translation is not a pure behavior of language. It roots deeply in the culture of the language. The establishment of Bassnett's cultural translation theory has pushed translation studies a step forward and has a profound influence in the field of translation studies. In the 1980s, translation study entered into the cultural translation era.The English version of Weicheng is translated by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K. Mao. Both of them are experts in Chinese literature. Jeanne Kelly graduated from university of Wisconsin in America with a master's degree in Chinese. Nathan K. Mao, who has a Chinese background himself, once studied in new Asia College in Hong Kong, Yale University in America and the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is the professor of English in Shippensburg State University, Pennsylvania and a well-known sinologist. Jeanne Kelly did the first draft of translation of Weicheng and Nathan K. Mao revised it. Fortress Besieged is a work of co-translation. It has the great significance to the cultural communication.This paper deals with the cultural information in translation from the perspective of Susan Bassnett's cultural translation. The study is from the different culture levels: surface culture (material culture), middle culture (culture of regulation and custom), deep culture (mental culture) and what's beyond the language. Firstly, this paper introduces the development of Bassnett's cultural translation theory and its details. Then the paper gives descriptions of Weicheng and Fortress Besieged. In the light of Bassnett's cultural translation theory, this paper points out the good aspects as well as limitations in the Fortress Besieged and finally concludes that:Only when the cultural differences are properly dealt with can translation reproduce in the target language the closest natural equivalent of the source language.