Application Of Susan Bassnett's Cultural Translation Theory In Literary Translation

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.Moment in Peking is an English work written by a Chinese writer. Because of this particularity of selecting material, both of the two versions might be seen as translations. 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 Moment in Peking and its Chinese version, Zhang Zhenyu's Jing Hua Yan Yun 《京华烟云》. It is the national culture stereotype that has determined Lin Yutang's 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 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 Moment in Peking is represented in 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 could be conducted with Susan Bassnett's cultural translation theory as a guideline. In this regard, Lin Yutang's Moment in Peking and Zhang Zhenyu's Jing Hua Yan Yun 《京华烟云》 are successful translations in spite of some flaws. Thus the possibility and applicability is further verified.