On The Intervention Of The Translator's Cultural Background Into The Process Of Literary Translation

The process of translation is actually a process of choices and decision. No translator is free from certain cultural background, and the culture of the society in which he is in has been branded on the translator's brain. Therefore, the recognition and a systematic study of the cultural factors that influence the translator's choices in the process of translation is significant for bringing to light the regularities of translation process as well as for the enrichment of translation studies.The essay is a tentative attempt on this aspect from the viewpoint of cultural translation. In this paper, the author tries to identify such factors and to make a convincing description of them, and tries to illustrate in what way these factors determine and limit the choices the translator makes in the course of translation.The paper consists of six parts.The first part makes a general introduction to the standpoint of this paper, and the magnificence of this study.Chapter One presents two of the main traditional approaches to translation studies: the linguistic approach and the literary approach.Chapter Two describes the booming of cultural studies, and introduces cultural shift ?one of the new trends in the field of translation studies.Chapter Three demonstrates the impacts of a translator's cultural background on his translation process: his motive for translation, his choice of the source texts, his understanding and representation: Modes of thinking, aesthetic criteria, ethics, ideology, cultural attitudes and so on.The last part draws a conclusion that an ineluctable question for study is presented to us by the stark fact that our translation process is much influenced by the cultural factors. No translation studies would be complete without the study of the influence of cultural elements upon the course of translation.