Translation Strategies Of Cultural Image And Its Cultural Loss

Along with the globalization of cultural communication, translation of classics has been a hot research point. The faultiness of translation theory and the deficiency of translators of classics are the obstacles of going global of Chinese culture. To accelerate the research into C-E translation of classics is a practical and valuable project, which is good for promoting national culture and blending Eastern culture with Western culture, as well as for retaining Chinese original cultural elements. This thesis aims at the translation of cultural images, a part of special characteristic in Chinese classics, and does a profound research. It chooses the C-E translation of Chuci by Xu Yuanchong as the research object. And then, it makes a systematic and theoretical analysis about the translation strategies of cultural images taken by translator and its cultural loss during the process of communication.Cultural image is one of special performances of metaphor. This thesis firstly applies the category of metaphor by George Lakoff to divide the cultural images in Chuci into three categories: orientational cultural images(orientational metaphor), ontological cultural images(ontological metaphor) and structural cultural images(structural metaphor); Secondly, it selects 41 pairs of orientational cultural images, 93 pairs of ontological cultural images and 19 pairs of structural cultural images from the original work and English translation of Chuci, and then it judges the translation strategies of them and uses SPSS to calculate the tendency of each translation strategy in order to estimate the translator's choice of translation strategy for cultural images. On the basis of this, it determines the cultural loss of cultural images in translation and calculates its proportion so as to estimate its extent.The present thesis consists of six chapters: the first chapter introduces the research background and significance, presents the framework of this study and makes definitions of some key terms; the second chapter makes a literature review about study of cultural image, cultural loss and the translation of Chuci both abroad and at home; the third chapter interprets the metaphor theory, the theoretical foundation of this study. And then, it states the relevance between metaphor and translation; the fourth is the research design, which contains the research questions and the research methodology-descriptive study, quantitative research and comparative method. At last, it shows the process of data collection and data analysis; the fifth chapter is the research procedure. At first, it argues the validity of collected data in this study; second, it analyzes the data and proposes the answers to research questions; in last chapter, the following conclusions are drawn: First of all, In the English translation of Chuci by Xu Yuanchong, the choice of translation strategy of cultural images is dynamic, different strategies for different cultural images. On the whole, it is apt to forienization.In the next place, the English translation of Chuci by Xu Yuanchong, more or less, encounters cultural loss to a certain extent; the cultural loss proportion of orientational cultural images is 48%; 66.7% for ontological cultural images and 100% for structural cultural images. As a final report, the causes of cultural loss are various, which are: the target domain of cultural image in SL is absent in TL; the target domain of cultural image in SL is misplaced in TL; translator's misunderstanding and mistranslation of target domain of cultural images in SL; the choice of translation strategies of cultural images by translator, moreover, the cultural elements of cultural images in TL is affected.Also, there are other aspects which can result into the cultural loss of cultural image: the diversity of cultural images and their time and spatial differences during its communication;...