On A Study Of Translation Strategies Of Culture-loaded Terms In The Analects Of Confucius From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Each nation has formed a culture with its own characteristics and this can belargely attributed to the differences of each nation’s geographical environment, its lifestyle, its social system, its historical background, its religious belief, as well aspeople’s ways of thinking and customs, etc. Generally, people often tend to use certainspecific words or expressions to communicate with others in the cultural context.Whether in original or in conceptual sense, words that contain cultural meanings arecalled culture-loaded words. These kinds of words reflect the cultural life of thiscountry directly or indirectly and transmit certain cultural information of this nation.They include concrete things, such as a kind of food. They also include abstractconcepts, such as a religious belief or a rite. American well-known translation theoristNida classifies cultures into five categories systematically, which are ecology,material culture, social culture, religious culture and linguistic culture. Thus,according to the classifications of Nida, culture-loaded terms in the Analects ofConfucius are divided into five categories:1) ecological culture-loaded terms whichinclude seasons, plants, deserts, mountains, rivers, etc.;2) material culture-loadedterms which consists of tools and objects, etc.;3) social culture-loaded terms thatcovers social organizations, class, social practices and social implications of actions;4)religious culture-loaded terms that includes the religious routine and beliefs, titles andnames of deities;5) linguistic culture-loaded terms which refers to the specificcharacteristics of the respective language, such as numbers and idioms.For more than half a century, the focus of translation research has been shiftedfrom the analysis on language to discussion on cultural factors. It has been acceptedthat translation is not only the transference of languages but also the communicationof cultures. Cultural factors have become one of the key subjects of translation research, and several new translation theories came into being. Since it was putforward in1964, Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory has provided a new angle ofview for studying translation. As to translation, Nida has come up with an entirelynew interpretation. He indicates that translating in the past focused on the form of themessage, aiming to reproduce the rhythms and grammatical structures. However, thenew focus of translating should be on the response of the receptors and the basic taskof translation is to achieve the closest natural equivalent. Nida states that there are twokinds of equivalence in translating: formal equivalence and functional equivalence.Formal equivalence focuses on verbal correspondence in languages, which istraditional. While functional equivalence is reader-oriented. It emphasized therelationship between the readers and the translated text, which is dynamic. Nida wasthe first scholar who regarded the role of receptors as an essential part and took it intoconsideration when evaluating the quality of translated text. Nida asserts that effectscaused by translated texts to target readers should be the same as what caused byoriginal texts to readers. Functional equivalence should be highlighted if there iscontradiction between functional equivalence and formal equivalence. Whenconsidering the cultural factors in the process of translation, Nida points out that asatisfactory translated text should reach such a level as there is no need for readers tocomprehend the cultural background of the source-language context.The research conducted in this thesis is a fairly thorough study on the translationstrategies of Chinese culture-loaded terms in The Analects of Confucius on the basisof Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory. Through the detailed discussion andcomparison between Arthur Waley’ and D.C.Lau’s versions, the translation strategiesand approaches of each category of culture-loaded terms are analyzed andsummarized. According to Functional Equivalence Theory, there are four translationstrategies that can be applied in translating culture-loaded terms, which aretransliteration, literal translation, free translation and annotation respectively. The lastmethod, annotation is usually adopted with other three approaches as theirsupplementary explanation. To create the best translated piece, there is one thingworth mentioning: all these four strategies do not exist singly. In actual translation practice, they are inseparable to each other and complementary to each other.