Exploring Cultural Filter In Literary Translation: Rickshaw Boy By Evan King As Example

The “cultural turn” in translation studies was put forward in1980s by SusanBassnett and Andre Lefevere, the representatives of Cultural School. They regardtranslation as some kind of historical and cultural phenomenon and take into account thecontext of target language. Similarly, the primary cultural focus in the transfer of textshas changed from source language to target language. The “cultural turn”, thereby,provides translation studies with new perspectives and approaches.Cultural filter, occurring frequently in literary translation, has attractedconsiderable attention in recent years. In A Model for Translation Quality Assessment(1977), House proposed formally the concept of cultural filter for the first time. Culturalfilter refers to the process of conscious selection, analysis, reference and reconstructionof foreign cultures under the guidance of native cultural accumulation and culturaltraditions. Hua Xianfa (2009) has pointed out that cultural filter’s forms of expression isdiversified, its scope universal, and its features of representation distinct. Generally, thedegree of cultural filter increases in direct proportion to cultural differences. In theprocess of literary exchange, most of literary translations, without suspicion, take effectthrough cultural filtering. It will be difficult for target language readers to receive thetranslation if the translator has not taken the target culture into account during thetranslation process.The present study, under the background of “cultural turn” in translation studies,has been made on the phenomenon of cultural filters in literary translation. It attempts toanalyze the actual mechanism of cultural filter in literary translation, and discuss itsforms of expression.After exploring the definition of cultural filter and its theoretical origin, the author,by means of a case study on Luo Tuo Xiang Zi (Rickshaw Boy), tries to analyze culturalfilter’s mechanism of operation as well as its forms of expression during the literarytranslation process so as to demonstrate the rationality and inevitability of cultural filter.According to the research, cultural filter’s mechanism of operation in practicaltranslation process would have diversified forms of expression in target text (TT) due tothe leverage of cultural difference. Through the case study of Luo Tuo Xiang Zi(Rickshaw Boy), it has been found that the forms of expression are primarilydemonstrated through some subjective strategies by translator, such as deletion, changeof plot, addition, and note-appending. Furthermore, it can also be clearly discovered through both theoretical and practical analysis that cultural filter is inevitable in literarytranslation. What may distinguish from each other, if there are, will be the varieddegrees to which cultural filter acts. There is no doubt that it is reasonable andinevitable for the existence of cultural filter during cross-cultural communication.