Study On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Elements In Lin Yutang's Translation Of Family Letters Of A Chinese Poet

Language and culture are inseparable. Language is the carrier of culture, "Language is the archives of history" (Emerson), and it is because of language that a people's culture is precisely preserved. Language is the mirror refraction of culture, and it is through the perspective of language that much splendor of the cultural patterns of a nation is glimpsed.The purpose of translation is to faithfully and accurately reproduce another ideology and culture which are reflected in another language. Therefore, the translator is a communication bridge between different cultures to deepen links of mutual understanding. Translation is not only the conversion process of language meanwhile also a cultural transplant process. Therefore, translators, who are engaged in cross-cultural translation activities cannot in isolation view translation ignoring cultures, but should attach importance to language differences and pay more emphasis on cultural differences to appropriately handle cultural factors in translation.Chinese culture is extensive and profound, and China's ancient culture has a long history of influence to foreign language. With the increasing trend of globalization, the exchange between Chinese and Western cultures has also deepened. Translation is an important form of cultural exchange, and Chinese culture-loaded words are important embodiments of traditional Chinese culture, so they enjoy high Chinese cultural characteristics. Since the objective existence of cultural differences, the translation of ancient Chinese cultural elements has always been considered to be an intractable problem. In today's era of cultural globalization, it is essentially important to maintain the characteristics of a culture and it is only because a culture is nationally unique that it exists in the world stage forever (National Is International). The author believes that the research in translatability of ancient Chinese culture-loaded words is in line with the needs of development of the times, and it helps to promote the spread and exchange of Chinese culture. On the other hand, this paper points out that ancient Chinese culture-loaded elements are also of untranslatability, and there is cultural distortion or cultural loss in cross-cultural translation. Due to language differences, it is impossible to translate entire original sound, form, meaning into target language, thus resulting in a variety of cultural loss, we must implement cultural compensation and cultural reconstruction with translation strategies.This thesis attaches critical study to the translation of culture-loaded messages and its translation strategies in Family Letters of a Chinese Poet. Exactly there are faults in the translation of Family Letters of a Chinese Poet, for example, many cases of translation distortion, cases of wrong translation etc. These problems are closely related with translation strategies adopted. So study on this book and case analysis can provide comprehensive choices of translation strategies. (1)From the perspective of lexicon, syntax and discourse structure, we can see that the translation of Family Letters of a Chinese Poet is one of his top outstanding masterpieces and also this English version of this book expressed the contents and forms of the original text to readers, and realized his translation goal. (2)Studied from the perspective of cross-cultural translation, the English version Family Letters of a Chinese Poet still has his faults. For example, the translation version is not faithful to some original contents, and there are not proper translation strategies etc. Domestication and foreignization solution are immoderately used without other strategies adopted together, or even original cultural messages are deleted, thus causing such an effect that foreign readers cannot master Chinese traditional cultures, and barriers happen to appear in reading process. As a result of this, it can not reach the goal of translation, i.e., to realize culture facsimile and culture reconstruction in translating, thus it caused translation distortion in the process of cross-cultural translation. Foreign readers can not enjoy the vivid and colorful foreign cultures. So, in special cases, we have to employ special strategies, and adopt comprehensive translation strategies to avoid cultural distortion and cultural loss in cross-cultural translation.This thesis includes totally five chapters. The first chapter introduces why I want to make this research in the translation of ancient Chinese culture-loaded elements, and talks about the importance of "culture facsimile". The second chapter is literature review. it penetrates into the pre-study on Lin Yutang and his translation works, and studies translatability, untranslatability, and comparative translatability of culture. On the basis of chapter two, chapter three analyses cultural reconstruction due to the existence of cultural default, also analyses cultural compensation due to the existence of cultural loss, further, introduces a variety of translation strategies should be adopted in translation to avoid cultural loss or cultural distortion since culture-loaded words are of translatability, untranslatability, and comparative translatability. In chapter four, the author classifies the culture-loaded words into five types from the English version of Family Letters of a Chinese Poet, makes analysis of cultural loss, culture distortion, cultural facsimile resulted by Lin Yutang's translation, and probes into different types of translation strategies that shall be adopted in translating culture-loaded words to make cultural compensation and cultural reconstruction. The last chapter is conclusion.The process of cross-cultural translation is to make deep anatomy, understand original meaning, digest essence of source language, words and source cultural elements, and thus reproduce the source culture with elaborate target language. The target language shall not only keep "original sapor"(foreignization), if necessary, but also shall keep "local sapor", that is, we shall adopt the translation strategy "domestication" to translate relative terms into the use and wont that foreign readers can accept, otherwise, it cannot realize cultural facsimile either. However, if the translation strategy of domestication is immoderately adopted in translating, if the author, always uses local target language to explain source cultural elements, then there is a lack of characteristics of source culture, thereby, foreign readers can easily achieve consistent understanding without ratiocinating, and thus foreign readers come to lose interest of ratiocinating and creating, and come to lose the desire of hunting after variety of foreign cultures. If the translation strategy of foreignization is immoderately adopted in the process of translating culture-loaded elements, therefore, messages of source culture are kept too much in the target language, thus it results in difficulty in consistent understanding for readers to understand source cultures. Finally it dampens the enthusiasm of target language readers'motive to learn about different characteristics of different cultures and dampens the enthusiasm of target language readers'aesthetic appreciation. "it is ad vocative to adopt foreignization translation strategy to translate Chinese culture-loaded words, and foreign readers can enjoy strong characteristic local sapor, thus it can promote exchanges and dialogues between East and West cultures--------, but when we advocate foreignization translation, we must avoid false foreignization, that is, just to seek for equivalence in literal meanings (denotative meanings) and form of two languages, but ignore the inner meaning of source language"(Wang,2006). Through analysis on the cultural loss and cultural distortion in Lin Yutang's translated Chinese cultural-loaded words in this book, we can find that we shall manage a variety of integrated strategies (transliteration, annotation, foreignization, domestication etc) to deal with different cultural elements, therefore, it can reflect the original cultural connotations more comprehensively.