A Postcolonial Perspective Study On Translating Culture-specific Items In News

Culture-specific terms refer to those culture specific words or expressions, which are the most sensitive language items and direct reflection of a nation's history and unique cultures.The globalization and the intensified intercultural communication lead to a rapid growth journalism and communication in this information era. News translation is taking a more and more important role in modern society. One of the major features of news reporting is the frequent use of culture-specific items, which are the direct reflections of the unique features of culture in different nations. Culture-specific items translation in news is related to politics, economy, culture, and other fields; it also reflects power differentials between different nations and different cultures.Postcolonial theory observes translation activities which have been undertaken in different historical contexts from the colonial perspective, and it also pays attention to the distortion and replacement of translated texts which conceal power struggle and operation between two cultures. From the postcolonial perspective, translation becomes an effective channel of imposing cultural hegemony on the Third World by the First World, i.e., translation is a channel of colonization. The author of this thesis collects a lot of culture- specific items in English and Chinese newspapers at first, then makes a research on the three aspects of culture-specific items translation: translation pattern, selection of the material and translation strategies from the postcolonial perspective. This research shows that due to the status gap and unequal power relations between different cultures caused by imbalanced political and economic development, the exchanges between cultural translation are not balanced. Privileged cultures, especially Anglo-American cultures become the greatest exporter with relatively much less impartion in translation. Generally speaking, translators in both foreign and Chinese news agencies adopt domestication in translating Chinese culture-specific items, while employ foreignization in translating English culture-specific items. In response to China's disadvantageous position in global communication and the dominant influence of news on the ideology of people, this thesis proposes news translation in relation to culture exporting. In order to fight against the hegemonic cultures, translators usually adopt some decolonization methods.