Cultural Factors And Literary Translation Strategies

Gone with the wind is a popular novel in the background of the Civil War in America. Up to now, there're at least seven translation versions of this novel published in China. A comparison of the different Chinese versions of this novel, including morphology, syntax and rhetoric, shows that the translators adopted domesticating or foreignizing strategy. The theories advocated by many experts, either at home or abroad, such as Yan Fu, Eugene Nida, Peter Newmark, Lawrence Venuti, David Katon, AndréLefevere, and so on, show language is inseparable from culture. In what situation the translator chooses either of the two strategies is actually influenced by the cultural factors. The choice of the translation strategies is influenced by both the shifting external and internal conditions, especially, the latter. It is determined by the change of the language of its own, the change of the readership in the target language and the ideology in the modern society.