Cultural Image Transmission In Translation

The growth of translation studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s, and we have witnessed an extraordinarily boom in translation research worldwide since then. Translation studies brings together work in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology, and economics. As may be expected, the "cultural turn" in translation studies, which is stipulated by Mary Snell-Hobby (1990) means the study of translation at the interface with culture, looking at translation from the cultural studies angle, taking translation studies away from purely linguistic analysis, and brings it into contact with other disciplines. In their introduction to Translation, History and Culture(1992), Bassnett and Lefevere dismiss the kinds of linguistic theories of translation and focus on the interaction between translation and culture, on the way in which culture impacts and constrains translation and on the larger issues of context, history and convention. (1992:6) They examine the image of literature that is created with forms and connotations that are involved in that process.In the west, Sherry Simon(1996) points out that the most exciting forward step in translation studies is definitely the "cultural turn", which increase another angle for translation researchers and understand the essence of translation, that is, the intercultural communication, translation is the communication of cultural information. Xie Tianzheng, (2003) also comments that "cultural turn" is the greatest outbreak in translation studies and the main point of translation studies should touch upon the series of cultural problems in intercultural communication and transmission, such as cultural misreading or loss or distortion of cultural information. Thus, translation is not only a transmission between languages but also the transmission from source culture to target culture. (2003, 26) Here the writer just aims to give an analysis on the influence of cultural factors on literary translation, namely, the transmission of cultural image.A cultural image is a kind of cultural symbol, including both the superficial form and the deep cultural content. Both the image form and the image content are worth studying, but the clash of images between the two languages often makes it difficult to keep both the form and the content in transmission ; sometimes misreading, loss or distortion of the original image is inevitable. Therefore, it is essential to find suitable ways to transmit cultural image. This thesis discusses the obstacles in cultural image transmission and problems caused by the obstacles, then with the explanation of Information Theory, the author points out that the essence of cultural image transmission is how to deal with the redundancy of information between two languages. At last, abiding by the two principles of cultural image transmission, the author puts forward the practical strategies on the classification of cultural image.The thesis consists of six chapters.In Chapter One, we talk about the current trend in translation studies, introducing the concept of culture and pointing out that "cultural turn" is the main trend in nowadays translation studies and it is the trend that make translation studies develops in a new angle, thus literary translation is argued in cultural perspective, among which is the transmission of cultural image.Chapter Two is concerned mainly with the concepts of image and cultural image, And then the detailed information about the performance of cultural image is also given clearly according to the theory of Nida ,including ecological ,material ,social, religious and linguistic cultural image.Chapter Three begins with the obstacles in cultural image transmission, namely, cultural presupposition and cultural default in source text. And then give a brief explanation on the problems caused by the obstacles, that is, the misreading, the loss and the distortion of cultural image. At last, with the introduction of Information Theory in detail, the author points out that the essence of cultural image transmission is how to deal with the redundancy of information between two languages.Chapter Four is devoted to the two basic principles of cultural image transmission, namely, principle of cultural equivalence and principle of validity. According to Newmark's theory, naturalness is what translation is pursuing, and in order to get to naturalness in cultural image transmission, the two principles must be abided by.Chapter Five is concerned about the strategies on the transmission of cultural image. Certain strategies will be made according to the classification of cultural image. In translation practice, there are, generally ,three types of cultural image: 1) deserted or old images; the transmission strategy is to desert the images and transmit them into sense 2) normal or stock images; normally four ways will be taken: substitution, partly retain the image with explanation, domestication and complete explanation 3) unique or new images, completely retain the image. Different strategies will be applied according to the types of cultural image. It is clear that in transmitting cultural image, appropriate strategies can be found if you can have a good observation and use your head well.In Conclusion, the author reviews the results of the previous analyses and explanations, and then reaches some vital and important conclusions concerning transmission of cultural image in the light of intercultural communication. In attaining the goal of intercultural communication in cultural image transmission, the basic requirement of a translator is the cross-cultural awareness, which promotes open- mindedness beyond one's own cultural border, contributing to a better understanding between people from different cultural contexts. Cross-cultural awareness can enable the translator to view each cultural image transmission as a context-bound reading, reflecting the particularity of its time and culture, so that source language culture heritage can be introduced to target language culture and at the same time the translated versions can be made accessible to target language readers.