Culture-loaded Word Based Research On Translation Strategies For Du Fu’s Poetry

Translation strategies take a critical position in the field of translation studies. Currently, researches on poetry translation strategies are regrettably in a severe shortage, not to mention the relevant studies made from the culture-loaded word perspective. The few researches available, however usually follow the conventional practice of cutting translation strategies into duality of foreignization and domestication by method of qualitative description, failing to investigate their inner layers and the reasons behind translator’s choice.Out of this deficiency, this thesis tries to make a culture-loaded word based research on translators’strategies in the translation of Du Fu’s poetry. With a quantitative method supplemented by qualitative analysis, this thesis, by investigating the inner structure of translation strategies, attempts to penetrate the motivations behind translators’choices of similar or different strategies. This research, with an application of corpus-based method to translation studies, rescans the relationship between foreignization and domestication. It is of great value in improving the studies on culture-loaded word translation strategies as well as raising the poetry translation quality while getting rid of the traditional defects.The thesis is carried out from the following five aspects:First, with a review on domestic and overseas researches on the translation strategies for Du Fu’poetry and culture-loaded words, this thesis gives a definition on culture-loaded words and points out the current researches characterized by subjective method, unitary paradigm and insufficient number call for further improvement. Second, a parallel corpus is established with54classic Du Fu’s poems and their corresponding English versions made by Wu Juntao and Rewi Alley. This makes a good preparation for extracting culture-loaded words. Third, a Foreignization-Domestication Scale (F-D Scale) is founded to explore the inner layers of translation strategies for the extracted374culture-loaded words. Line diagrams are also created based on the figures involved, which lays a solid foundation for the following discussion. Fourth, translators’strategies are analyzed with the help of these figures, the statistical software SPSS13.0as well as examples. Finally, the thesis examines the motivations behind translators’choices of strategies through text analysis, contributing to reasonable explanations for their behaviors.Through data analysis, conclusions are drawn as follows:Foreignization and domestication as translators’translation strategies are a dialectical unity with translators’ choices always landing on some point of the continuum. Wu’s overall strategy is dispersive with source language (SL)-oriented strategies remaining basically equal with the target language (TL)-oriented strategies, indicating that he tries to save the SL cultural flavor also considers the TL readers’acceptance; Alley concentrates on the TL-oriented strategies, reflecting he focuses more on the acceptance of his translation in the TL culture. Though, two translators’specific strategies are positive correlated, Alley uses more TL-oriented strategies and consequently his version is fluent; Wu possesses more SL-oriented strategies and accordingly his version carries more Chinese cultural flavor. Choices of translation strategies are related to China’s translation environment, translators’cultural backgrounds and cultural orientations, translators’purposes and translation principles.