Walking Out Of The Shadow Of The So-called Weak Culture-on Translation From The Perspective Of Cultural Differences

Human society has entered a great era in which science and technology are developing at an amazing or unprecedented speed. The international situation is undergoing profound changes. Political multipolarization and economic globalization are further deepening. The whole word community appears to be no more than a large global village due to the modern means of transportation and communication. Cultural exchanges have become more frequent. However, different cultures play different roles on the arena of intercultural communication, due to the unbalanced development of their politics and economy. Within a certain historical period, there are the strong cultures which take a dominant and active position in the international cultural exchanges while weak ones are in a quite inferior and passive position. Superpowers take advantage of the soft power--culture, to carry out cultural colonialism. They export to the weak cultures their ideologies, values and cultures and make them become the standards to judge the world so as to control the whole world. Translators of weak cultures have lost their cultural identity. Under such circumstances, they translate all kinds of books of politics, economy, law, literature, and technology from the strong cultures without careful selection. However, when translating from weak cultures to strong cultures, those translators spare no efforts to live up to the expectation of English readers, usually at the cost of their own native cultures. In order to make their translated texts acceptable in strong cultures, they base their principles of translation on the dominant Western ideologies, values and standards.This thesis tries to explore the relationship between culture and translation from the perspective of postcolonial context. It also studies the main differences between Chinese culture and the Anglo-American culture so as to make the Chinese translators have a good understanding of their own culture. While translating, translators must adhere to right cultural identity and adopt proper translation methods so to keep the national flavor and features of the Chinese culture. Only in this way can we extend the influences of the Chinese culture in the world and promote an equal dialogue between Chinese culture and the Anglo-American culture.