A Study On The Translation Of Culture-Loated Vocabulary In Liao Zhai Zhi Yi From A Hermeneutic Perspective

Liao Zhai Zhi Yi is a bright pearl in the long river of Chinese classic works. Pu Songling takes his audience into a world that is on one hand alien to his/her everyday environment and yet, on the other hand, it is a natural part of the human imagination and reflects the real life. These tales are not purely imaginative constructs, but instead, incorporate actual customs, beliefs, spatial and social organizations and relations within their narrative imaginations. This novel involves a lot of culture-loaded vocabulary, which makes it more difficult to translate it into English. This thesis makes a study on the culture-loaded vocabulary in Liao Zhai Zhi Yi, intending to make as much contribution as possible to the intercultural communication of this great novel and Chinese culture.Since hermeneutics mainly involves understanding, meaning and the relationship between reader and the text, translation is inseparable from understanding and interpreting texts, which are the initial steps in any kind of translation including literary translation. Therefore, the application of hermeneutics into translation is of great importance for the development of translation theory and practice.This thesis intends to make a study on the culture-loaded vocabulary in Liao Zhai Zhi Yi with Gadamers hermeneutic principles, namely historicality of understanding, prejudice, fusion of horizons and effective history. Three versions of Liao Zhao Zhi Yi have been used in this thesis, which are Giles, Yang Xianyi and Denis & Victor's versions. When the three versions are put together for comparison, Denis & Victor's version is always as the best, while Giles' version is often criticized for its unfaithfulness. However, I think it is not fair to evaluate their versions in this way, because they are produced in different historical periods, and many other factors should be taken into consideration when we compare them. To give them a more impartial evaluation, I think the theory of Hermeneutics can provide a wider and more reasonable perspective for us to look at different versions of the same work.In addition to Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis mainly consists of three chapters.Chapter 1 makes a brief introduction to the development of hermeneutics and exhibits the three main principles of Gamader's hermeneutic theory, namely historicality of understanding, fusion of horizons and effective history. And the embodiment of the three theories in translation is also studied in this chapter, including mistranslation, cultural filtration and re-translaition.Chapter 2 gives an introduction to the culture-loaded vocabulary, including its definition, classification and the previous study on the translation of culture-loaded vocabulary. Based on this, the limitation of the previous study is pointed out and hermeneutics is put forward as a perspective to evaluate the translation of culture-loaded vocabulary.Chapter 3 is the most important part of the thesis, in which the theory introduced in the former chapters will be combined with practice, the culture-loaded vocabulary in Liao Zhai Zhi Yi. In this chapter, the relationship between the three hermeneutic principles of Gadamer with translation is exhibited in detail by plenty of examples selected from the three versions of Liao Zhai Zhi Yi.