Cultural Equivalence In Literary Translation

Because of the intimate relationship between language and culture, it is no exaggeration to say that language is the foundation of culture and, meanwhile, culture is the track along which language forms and develops. As a means of communication, translation plays an important role in cross-cultural exchange. However, the cultural difference poses untold difficulties to translation. The conflict between different cultural concepts and cultural backgrounds may hamper or even discontinue communication.Rich of cultural information, literary translation is a hard nut for translators to crack and has aroused ongoing controversy. Due to the existence of cultural vacuum caused by two entirely, different cultural traditions to which Chinese and English belong, there is no such thing as absolute equivalence in literary translation between English and Chinese. This thesis starts by surveying Yan Fu's translation principle (Xin-Da-Ya), combines it with Nida's functional equivalence and Peter Newmark's theory of communicative translation, and draws the conclusion that through careful studies relative equivalence can be achieved, namely, (1) the equivalence at the rank of word and phrase, (2) theequivalence at the rank of sentence, (3) the equivalence at the rank of passage and (4) the equivalence at the rank of discourse. Moreover, translators should have in mind that certain culture-loaded expressions are untranslatable, but some compensation approaches such as allusion could be employed to bridge the cultural gap in literary translation.This thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter One chiefly expatiates on the nature of literary translation and the definition of culture, and points out that one of the tasks for translators pursuing should be transmitting cultural information to help the readers understand the original text as the native readers do.Chapter Two starts by introducing translation theories in general, then chooses the most popular three schools in China, i.e, Yan Fu's translation principle "Xin-Da-Ya", Nida's functional equivalence, and Peter Newmark's communicative translation. Through the combination of these three theories, this thesis attempts to present a theory of cultural equivalence.Chapter Three deals with translation equivalence, which falls into four ranks:(l) equivalence at the rank of word and phrase, (2) equivalence at the rank of sentence, (3) equivalence at the rank of passage and (4) equivalence at the rank of discourse. Abundant examples in this chapter will prove the possibility to achieve cultural equivalence in literary translation. However, this chapter does not deny the existence of some untranslatable culture-loaded expressions, but offers the compensation approaches to bridge the cultural gap.Chapter Four dwells on the two approaches to literary translation, namely literal translation and free translation. The thesis advocates a flexible way of employing them, that is, using them at proper situation respectively or combining both if necessary. This also stands for the trend in literary translation, that is, literary translation will go from domestication to foreignization in its development.