Two English Translations Of Chinese Cultural-Loaded Words In Shui Hu Zhuan From Semantic And Communicative Perspective

Research on English translations of Chinese classical literary works has received considerable attention in the translation field. Shui Hu Zhuan, as one of the excellent Chinese classical literary works, contains a lot of cultural-loaded words and expressions which embrace abundant cultural profundity of Chinese nation. In translating these words or expressions in Shui Hu Zhuan, translators are often confronted with challenges from tremendous cultural differences and sometimes from difficulty in finding full equivalences and complete corresponding expressions between the source language and the target language. Therefore, in dealing with different cultural and linguistic elements, translators have to do more recreations and modifications in their translation. In the existing literature, studies on English translation of Shui Hu Zhuan have concentrated on the elucidation of translators' subjectivity, the interpretation of Chinese culture in the original, and evaluation on the quality of English translation. Perspectives employed in these studies range from Reception Aesthetics, Relevant Theory, Cultural Hermeneutics to Social linguistics. However, few efforts have been made to approach English translations of cultural-loaded words/expressions to examine translators' specific taste area from the perspective of Newmark's translation theory. This being so, much space is left for us to extend the study in this field.Taking Peter Newmark's semantic and communicative translation rationale as the theoretical backbone, selecting two influential English versions translated by Pearl. S. Buck and Shapiro Sidney, the thesis makes a qualitative and descriptive analysis on the translations of Chinese cultural-loaded words/expressions in the two versions from five aspects, namely, gallant-fraternity's words, characters' nicknames, Chinese religious-related words, Chinese historical-culture words and ancient official-title words. Comparative and descriptive analysis is conducted on how the two translators deal with their translations at the micro or lexical/syntactical level. Through the interpretation of their two detailed treatments of cultural-loaded words/expressions taken from the five aspects, the thesis examines how Buck and Shapiro make their own dynamic adaptations, adjustments and even recreations into their translations. The present study finds that the two translators approach their translations uniquely, with each having their own distinctive style and taste area. Peal. S. Buck prefers to use semantic translation approach with great efforts to preserve the style of expressions and sentence structures which are "in tune" with the original, making her translations maintain the identity of the original culture and its spirit faithfully. Shapiro tends to choose communicative translation approach with more consideration on the acceptability of the target language reader. Providing faithful translation as far as possible, Shapiro makes remarkable transformations, creative paraphrases and adequate recreations into his translation from Chinese cultural-loaded words/expressions, and sometimes he replaces them with "exotic" English expressions closer to the target language and culture systems in order to reduce the readership difficulties caused by the barrier of cultural differences. Based on the above analysis, the thesis makes a further interpretation of the reasons for the different translation activities and styles conducted by Buck and Shapiro, explains how their respective translation purposes and translation principles may influence their translation choices, and how their different life-experiences, social states and hi story-cultural background may have an impact on their translation preferences. The thesis is expected to enrich the content and enlarge the horizon of translation study of Shui Hu Zhuan. It may also offer the explanatory power of Newmark's translation theory in literary works. The author hopes that this research can provide some references to related translation study on other Chinese classical literary works.The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter serves as the introduction of research background, definition and delimitation of CLW, elucidation of purpose and methods of the study. Chapter Two presents theory backbone and literature review. Then chapter Three registers a detailed comparative analysis of English translation of CLW in two versions in terms of five aspects as mentioned above. Chapter Four generalizes two translators'different translation strategies and principles from the perspective of Newmark's semantic and communicative translation, and importantly makes an interpretation to their respective reasons behind different translation activities socially and historically. Lastly, Chapter Five serves as the conclusion.