On The Target-reader Oriented Translation Of Cultural Elements In Six Chapters Of A Floating Life By Lin Yutang

The thesis aims at exploring the target reader oriented translation adopted by Lin Yutang in translating the culture elements from the perspective of Skopos theory through the study of Six Chapters of a Floating Life. The thesis studies the translating difficulties of the original work due to the traditional culture elements and the classical Chinese philosophy. It also traces the experience of Lin Yutang and his translation ideas, which qualifies him a great translator. When translating such a classical Chinese literature work, he faces many details of translating the cultural elements. In order to study his translation strategies, the thesis categorizes the cultural elements of the original work and makes it easy for the study and the thesis categorizes them into two broad groups: culture-loaded words and culture-specific phenomena. On Lin's translation strategies, some researchers on Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life summarize his translation strategies into semantic translation or communicative translation and some summarize into domestication or foreignization. The thesis suggests that Lin Yutang adopts the target-reader oriented translation. It illustrates the manifestation and feasibility of the target-reader oriented approach in the translating process based on the Skopos theory. Skopos theory attaches importance to the target readers. In other words, the target reader is quite an important factor for the translator in his translation and all that he does should be oriented to the target reader. The traditional translation theories give much more attention to the equivalence rather than the target readers. In Lin Yutang's version, he gives importance to the target readers and he adopts different strategies in dealing with the complicated cultural elements. The thesis illustrates the manifestation and feasibility of the target-reader oriented approach in the translating process. His version faithfully conveys the spirit of the original work, well reproduces the cultural information and at the same time possesses high readability. Through the analysis of the translation work done by Lin Yutang, the paper illustrates that those cultural elements translation should take the target readers' language habit and culture into consideration and summarizes the strategies adopted by Lin Yutang in dealing with cultural elements.