On Translation Of Culture-bound Elements

Since the study of translation has shifted its focus to the study of culture-boundelements, many researchers have done a great deal of work and written large numberof articles in this field. They have introduced generally domestication andforeignization principles at the macro-level, and advanced different strategies at lowerlevel. There have been many articles and essays on comparative study of Chineseversions of Tess. However, there have rarely been complete and thorough comparisonsbetween two complete Chinese versions of Tess in the cultural translation perspective.The thesis deals mainly with the translation of culture-bound elements in Tess bycomparisons of two Chinese versions, among which, one is translated by ZhangGuruo, the other by Sun Zhili.The purpose of the thesis is to find out the answers to the questions: 1. How didthe translators deal with the culture-bound elements in the Chinese versions of Tess ona macro-level? 2.What strategies are appropriately used in the process ofculture-bound elements translation?The thesis is divided into five parts, the first of which is the introduction. In thispart, the author reviews the research background and explains the reason why the twoChinese versions are selected as the research subject. And then the research questionsand the objective are put forward. The significance of the study is lastly stated in thispart.In chapter two, the author mainly discusses the relationship between the cultureand translation. The author begins with a simplified definition of culture andculture-bound elements. And then the author illustrates the relationship betweenculture and translation. The English culture-bound elements are embedded with richcultural connotations, and translation of them is one of the most difficult points andmajor barriers in E-C translation.In chapter three, firstly, the author briefly reviews the definitions of"foreignization" and "domestication" and the previous study on them in China. Then Zhang's translation strategies of culture-bound dements are compared with Sun's inthree aspects: social culture, linguistic culture and ideological culture. At the sametime, whether their strategies are effective to translate the culture-bound elements areevaluated according to Liu Zhongde's translation principles or criteria after ameticulous analysis. After the comparison, the author points out that each strategyadopted by two translators has its own merits and demerits. In conclusion, thestrategy of foreignization is more effective to translate the culture-bound elements,whereas domestication is necessary under some circumstances, esp. for translation oflinguistic culture.In chapter four, at first, the author reviews several concrete approaches to thetranslation of culture-bound elements. Then the author illustrates which approachesare more effective to realize the strategy of foreignization and faithfully transmitsource culture. The author finally sums up that transliteration, loan translation andexplanatory notes are more effective to deal with translation of foreign cultureelements today. But the translator should pay more attention to the acceptability oftarget language when adopting the approaches in order to transfer the foreigrmess asmuch as possible.In the last chapter, two Chinese versions are evaluated in the perspective of thetranslation of culture-bound elements in summary. The results of the comparisonsclearly show that each of the two versions has its advantages and disadvantages intranslation of culture-bound elements. The ideal translation strategies, both succeed inmaintaining the important cultural information and simultaneously guaranteeingreadability of the target text. Foreignization represents translation tendency on acultural level, whereas the necessity of domestication should not be undervalued.Foreignization should be applied as possible as we can in translation of culture-boundelements. Only when foreignization is not feasible, should we come back to thinkabout domestication.