On Translating Chinese Culture-loaded Words Into English

With the rapid development of economy and cultural exchanges in the world, cultural transfer has attracted intensifying attention in the translation field. So the paper focuses on translation from the cultural perspective. Then the large topic is narrowed down to English translation of Chinese culture-loaded words (CCLW), and the reason mainly lies in two aspects: 1) Taking an overall view of translation studies in China, even today, China's translation holds English-Chinese translation as its core, which cannot match our county's brilliant culture and China's greater role in the international communication. The dissemination of Chinese culture is a compulsory responsibility for the Chinese translators. 2) Word, as the most active and the most sensitive component of language, can reflect culture directly. China has a magnificent culture with a long history. The words which reflect its unique culture are countless. The translation of such words is of great significance in introducing Chinese culture to the world. But just because of the unique cultural connotations of these words, their accurate translation poses a very difficult problem to the translators. The writer intends to do some tentative research in this field, hoping that this paper can make its due contribution to translation studies, particularly translation studies of CCLW.The paper starts with the relationship of language, culture and translation. Language and culture are closely related and interdependent. Language is the most important organic component of culture. Every language is, to a certain degree, peculiar to a language community and embodies the way of life of a certain culture; language is influenced and shaped by culture. It is so deeply ingrained in culture that the meanings of language must be determined by their cultural contexts. So translation is a bilingual activity and more essentially a bicultural activity.What are Chinese culture-loaded words is the first question should be made clear before translating them. After the analysis of different interpretations of culture-loaded words put forward by many scholars, such as Mona Baker, Hu Wenzhong and Sun Zhili, etc. the definition of Chinese culture-loaded words is clear. CCLW are words that are peculiar to the Chinese culture and have no corresponding equivalents in any other languages, such as English. They are the most sensitive language items and the direct reflection of Chinese history and unique culture. They can be roughly divided into two groups according to the conceptual meaning and associative meaning. By "conceptual meaning", we mean these words fail to find conceptual equivalents in the English. Based on Nida's classification of culture, they can be subclassified into ecological words, material words, social words, religious words and linguistic words. By "associative meaning", we mean the associative meaning of these words falls short of or differs from the corresponding words in English. They all convey Chinese culture from different aspects. In order to translate them accurately, we need a principle to guide our translation activity. Famous translation principles such as "Faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance" of Yan Fu, "spiritual conformity" of Fu Lei and "faithfulness, expressiveness, closeness" of Liu Zhongde all accept faithfulness to the source text as the core of translation. It is also true of the translating of Chinese culture-loaded words. But being faithful to the source text may induce huge difficulties and block the smooth communication among people with different cultural backgrounds. Thus, the translator should also take "intelligibility" into consideration. Lu Xun's principle of "faithfulness and smoothness" with his emphasis on "faithfulness" is suitable for the translators of CCLW who assume the responsibility of spreading Chinese culture under the circumstance of globalization, thus it is adopted as a primary principle in translating CCLW. Accordingly, the translation approach—foreignization should be adopted as the primary approach with it emphasis on "faithfulness", and it will be the trend in translation due to the increasing cross-culture communication; and the domestication approach is the necessity in translation with its emphasis on "smoothness". Both domestication and foreignization are justified in the English translation of Chinese culture-loaded words. As the primary choice of translation approach, foreignization serves to retain the cultural flavor of the source language, and help extend the influence of Chinese culture in international communication. Nevertheless, domestication also deserves the translators' consideration in that it can eliminate cultural conflict and achieve intelligibility of the TT. Free translation, free translation with an explanation, substitution methods and literal translation, literal translation with an explanation, transliteration, transliteration with an explanation methods are the main specific methods of domestication and foreignization respectively. The methods are explained one by one with carefully chosen examples as illustrations. At last, some problems exist in the translation of CCLW are pointed out and the writer gives some suggestions.