On The Issue Of Vacancy Of Local Color Words In Chinese - English Translation

Call to Arms and Wandering, the two short stories selections by Lu Xun, are considered the precedent for modern country literature in China. In these selections, geographical dialect and culture-loaded words can be found everywhere, most of which lack English equivalents. This is the so-called lexical gap. By examining these words in the two English translations by the Yangs and William Lyell, I attempt to figure out what is preserved and what is lost by some strategies in specific translations and explore the lexical gap about Shaoxing expressions in C-E translation.Through the comparison of the two versions, I find that both Yang and Lyell abandon English dialectal equivalent for Shaoxing dialect, but Lyell pays more attention to Lu Xun's style. Based on the evidence found, I then argue that geographical dialect translation should be based on dialectal function to make the translation pure and appealing. In order to translate geographical culture-loaded words, componential analysis and annotation are frequently adopted. Because of different identities and translation views, Yang is inclined to the former to preserve the easiness of the original, while Lyell to the latter to introduce the source culture. A translator should keep the balance between the two strategies. Besides, the thesis proposes two ways to understand the meanings of cultural words, firstly to make the full use of connotations in the source text, secondly to find out more information beyond the text.