The Transformation Of Cultural Imagery In Translation

It has been a long-debated issue whether translation is a science or an art, especially among Chinese scholars who are engaged in the study of the translating of literary works. Such binary opposition as the "whether /or" mode of thinking will not help to set up an ideal paradigm in translation studies for translators as well as translation theorists. We should raise our perspective to a higher level and reflect on the established principles of translation in a broader cross-cultural context, namely that a translator of literature is actually translating cultures. Despite countless debates and discussions about translation and culture, there still remains much to do in translation studies from a cross-cultural point of view. Cross-cultural studies surpass the border between Oriental culture and Occidental culture, making it possible for them to conduct dialogues on an equal level. To realize the aim of cross-cultural communication, translation serves as an indispensable means to bridge the gap between Oriental culture and Occidental culture, especially for the cultural imagery, which is the cream of the culture.In Chapter One, we talk about the concepts of culture, language and cultural imagery. Whether in the Oriental or in the Occidental, culture is a conception with a long history, which influences us greatly in many a respects, including language. We say that thoughts are expressed by means of languages. As a basis for a society to exist, language has the function to transfer culture. And nowadays, the tendency of cross-cultural communication unites the culture and language more tightly than before. For cultural imagery, its translation poses a headache to translators.Chapter Two concerns mainly the performance of the cultural imagery, in which, there are the performances of plants, animals and numbers, even the images in idioms, proverbs and allusions, etc.Chapter Three deals with some mistransformations of cultural imagery. The author mainly points out three kinds of mistransformations.The first one is caused by the translator's not understanding of the different geographical conditions, natural surroundings and the weather. The second one is caused by the translator's lack of the knowledge of the distinctions between the life styles, thinking patterns, customs, beliefs and cultural traditions, etc. The third one is caused by the translator's ignorance of different images in different cultures.Chapter Four is devoted to the transformation of the cultural imagery. In this chapter, we first deal with the function of the translators, which is discussed about from the two stages, decoding and encoding, which constitute the process of translation as intercultural communication. Cultural imagery translation, a specific form of intercultural communication, consists of the translator's decoding of the SL imagery in SL cultural context and his encoding of the SL imagery in TL cultural context. And so, the translator is a tracker, stepping in the tracks of the writer who came before, careful not to step on anybody's toes, alert to the direction the tracks are pointing, attentive to the scenery, the context, trying not to disturb anything. One of the purposes of translator is to lead the TL readers to contact with a different culture, try to get cultural images and associated meanings to reappear in the TL readers' minds most similar with what has produced in the SL readers' minds. And then it will result in such an effect that the cultural shock will be gradually reduced, which is caused by the cultural distinction, through the process to be familiar with the SL culture in degrees, and in the end, it will disappear. The other three parts of this chapter are:1) to discuss about the transformation of cultural imagery from the aspect of translation theories and the translation methods ;2) to discuss the transformation of the cultural imagery from the differences of thinking patterns, attitudes, life styles, etc;3) to discuss translation of some cultural concepts, idioms, allusions and proverbs from the a...