Cultural Studies On Shuhui Yang And Yunqin Yang's Translation Of Jingshi Tongyan

The Masterpiece, Jingshi tongyan, represents the peak of ancient Chinese vernacular fictions, which has a great impact on the development of literature later on. However, very few researches have been conducted on the translation of Jingshi tongyan. The first complete translation of Jingshi tongyan was translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang, and the significance of studying this English version is obvious.Based on theories related with domestication and foreignization of translation, cultural translation and functional translation, this paper analyzes the features of the translation of Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang from the perspective of culture and evaluates the gain and loss in their translation of the appellations, idioms and religious terms. Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang translated the appellations mostly through the approach of domestication. But they translated idioms through the approaches of both domestication and foreignization. For religious culture related to figures and terms in Buddhism and Taoism, Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang inclined to translate them through foreignization, keeping closer to the original work.On the whole, their translation is informative and entertaining, although they could have paid more attention to the subtle differences of some words and could have added some annotations for better understanding of target readers. And the translation has successfully presented Chinese vernacular fiction and Chinese culture to English readers for all the mistranslations and incomplete translations.