On The English Translation Of Chinese Culture-Loaded Terms In Six Chapters Of A Floating Life By Lin Yutang

With the rapidly increasing number of foreigners who are interested in Chinese culture, translation plays a more and more important role in spreading culture. Culture-loaded terms are direct reflections of the particular culture of a country. Therefore, translating culture-loaded terms in Chinese literary works has been an important issue. Up to now, many scholars at home and abroad have given insights into the translation strategies and methods of culture-loaded terms. However, few of them discussed translation in light of skopos theory. Skopos theory, put forward in the1970s by Hans. J. Vermeer and introduced to China in the1990s, holds that the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose of the overall translation.This paper attempts to study the English translation strategies and methods of Chinese culture-loaded words and expressions in the English version of Six Chapters of a Floating Life by Lin Yutang from the perspective of skopos theory, in the hope of verifying and explaining widely-used translation strategies for culture-loaded terms. This paper adopts both descriptive and inductive approaches to carry out the study. In search of an applicable principle and corresponding strategies to translate Chinese culture-loaded terms into English by native Chinese translators, the paper studies Lin’s translation by comparing the source text and the translated text in three principles of skopos theory. It is found that Lin skillfully employs transliteration, literal translation, free translation, annotation and substitution to deal with different types of culture-loaded terms, thus spreading Chinese culture to English readers. The paper concludes that guided by skopos theory, Lin Yutang achieves the goal of informing the target readers of Chinese culture through his translation. This paper points out that skopos theory has directive function in translation practice.