Cultural Factors And Translation Strategies In Cross-cultural Translation

The thesis focuses on cultural transference. Most modern translation theorists have agreed on the fact that translation is not only the transference between languages, but also the transference between cultures. Moreover, more importance is attached to the transference of culture. Translation is defined as a kind of cross-cultural communication. In translating process, cultural differences interfere with the transference of language and culture. Cultural factors are the concrete manifests of cultural differences. The cultural factors, to be exact, the words containing cultural factors, can be translated, transferred, and transplanted. There are two strategies with the approaches to cultural factors involved in translation: alienation and adaptation. This classification will be demonstrated through an analysis of translation of words or phrases containing cultural factors in the two English versions of the Chinese classical novel Honglou Meng. Through comparison, we find that translation of alienation does better in translating cultural words. Alienation helps transfer culture. However, cultural differences are hard to be eliminated easily and the cultural distance grows out of them. However, as acculturation becomes more frequent, the compensating approaches to the cultural distance caused by cultural factors will be improved continually, and the most succinct expressions will be used to make up for the cultural distance within the maximum limit.