The Interpretation Of Mental Cultural Information In Lin Yutang's Six Chapters Of A Floating Life: From The Perspective Of Susan Bassnett's Cultural Translation Theory

With the establishment of anthropocentrism in the field of scientific research across the world and the upsurge of the cultural school in translation studies, the "cultural value" of translation has gradually become the focus of academic inquiries in the discipline. However, many of the writings related to cultural translation often tend to argue about culture in a rather vague and loose way without necessary gradation of its scale, thus hindering to a certain degree the development of the theory and practice of translation studies in the cultural approach. In view of this, the present thesis makes an attempt to discover the important status and functions of mental culture in translation, the essence of culture as a whole. Such a work is carried out through describing the classification of culture into three sub-categories, namely the material, behavioral and mental culture phenomena, and thus confirming the characteristics of mental cultural information and its feasibility and necessity in translation.This thesis, based on the cultural translation theory of Susan Bassnett, the representative of cultural school, chiefly attempts to probe into the following problems through an analysis of the interpretation of mental cultural information in Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life: it is the translator Lin Yutang's life philosophy that has determined his choice of SL text, as well as his emphasis of translation-mental cultural information and his translation strategies; the interpretation of mental cultural information should abide by certain translation principles and adopt various translation methods in order to accomplish accurate transculturation. With the reference of concrete data analysis, the following conclusion can be reached: the mental cultural information in Six Chapters of a Floating Life is represented in two forms: one is the "precedent phenomenon" embodied in a precedent name, a precedent situation and a precedent text, the other is the national cultural stereotype expressed specifically by thinking and behavioral stereotypes. The accuracy of its interpretation will directly affect the quality of translation. Analysis shows that the interpretation of mental cultural information couldbe conducted with Susan Bassnett's cultural translation theory as a guideline. In this regard, Lin Yutang's Six Chapters of a Floating Life is a successful translation in spite of some of its flaws. Thus its possibility and applicability is further verified.