A Comparative Study Of The Chinese Translations Of The Religious Discourses In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter From A Cultural Perspective

In this thesis, the author attempts to apply both concepts and theories of culture studies such as Pierre Bourdieu's "cultural capital" and the relatively latest theories of translation studies such as Andre Lefevere's views on the objectives of translation as well as Susan Bassnett's "cultural turn" in translation studies to the analysis of the Chinese translations of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter with special attention to the translation of religious discourses. The relationships among translation, culture, religion and literature would be elaborated, and further illustrated through the comparative study of the Chinese translations of the religious discourses involving such usages as allusions, symbolism and metaphors. As a complement to the context-based comparative study of the examples, componential analysis borrowed from semantics is applied in the translation of cultural words, which is based on Peter Newmark's related theories on culture and translation. Different translators' translation techniques are summarized so as to show their effectiveness and the factors influencing their choices of these approaches. In the final analysis, the author intends to reveal that in order to better circulate the cultural capital across cultural boundaries through translation, translators should have sufficient cultural awareness and cultural knowledge and take the responsibility to balance between the two cultures they represent.