A Study On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In The English Version Of Lang Tu Teng From The Perspective Of Functionalism

This thesis analyzes the culture-loaded words in the English translation of Lang Tu Teng from the perspective of functionalism. The main focus is on the significant role the functionalism plays in the decision-making of the translation strategies employed by the translator to deal with culture-loaded words in Lang Tu Teng.The first chapter introduces Lang Tu Teng and its English version as well as the original author Jang Rong and the translator Howard Goldblatt. The significance and purpose of the thesis is fore grounded and the structure of the thesis is given its prominent position. Chapter Two is the literature review in which studies at home and abroad are presented and their merits and limitations are pointed out. Different from the previous studies, this thesis analyzes culture-loaded word in Lang Tu Teng from a broader point of view--the functionalism, which considers translation process as dynamic involving not only static intertextual factors between the source text and the target text but also intratextual factors like the initiator, the addressee and the translator. Chapter Three introduces functionalism which serves as the theoretic framework of the thesis. Functional approach is the most influential translation theory in western countries since1970s. Functionalism includes text typology, skopos theory, the principle of function plus loyalty, documentary and instrumental translation, the criterion of adequacy, etc. The central idea of functionalism is skopos rule:the skopos a translation action is to achieve determines the process of the translational action, that is, the end justifies the means. Chapter Four analyzes the skopos of Lang Tu Teng, the initiator, the expectation of the addressee and the translation theory of the translator. Underlined by these elements, the translation of Lang Tu Teng is required to be acceptable and to be faithful with the first principle prior to the second one. In Chapter Five, the author of this thesis makes an attempt to analyze and comment on the legitimacy of the strategies adopted in the cultural transplanting process in terms of functionalism. The analysis is conducted within the framework of the following categories of culture-loaded words:ecological culture-loaded words, material culture-loaded words, social culture-loaded words, religious culture-loaded words and linguistic culture-loaded words. This part summarizes the translation strategies of Goldblatt who tries to reach the functions by adopting both documentary and instrumental translation strategies giving priority to the latter. By resorting to these strategies, Goldblatt accommodates specific Chinese cultural elements in so far as the western readers can accept them. The last part concludes that this thesis analyzes intratextual and intertextual factors in the translation process of Lang Tu Teng in terms of functionalism. The analysis shows that Goldblatt mainly adopts documentary translation and instrumental translation with a priority to the latter, which may shed light on the translation of modern and contemporary Chinese-English translation.