An Investigation Of Lin Yutang’s Translation Strategies: With Reference To The Cultural Elements In Moment In Peking

As the world is moving toward globalization, people are increasingly concerned withthe preservation and transmission of their local culture. Translation plays a significant rolein promoting culture transmission. The debate over how to effectively promote the localculture to the foreigners has been always on these years in the translation field. Since1995,Venuti’s theory about domestication and foreignization pushed the debate over culturaltranslation towards a peak.Moment in Peking is an English book composed by Lin Yutang in1930s. Thismasterpiece of Lin has been nominated four times for the Nobel Prize due to its profoundinfluence upon the western world. In this book, Lin Yutang presents almost all aspects ofChinese people and Chinese culture to the westerners. In transmitting the cultural elements,Lin Yutang mainly translated these cultural elements to preserve Chinese culture. Previousstudies put their focus on the Chinese translated version of Moment in Peking and onlysome translated parts of Moment in Peking. This paper will try to analyze all the translatedelements of Moment in Peking through the theory of domestication and foreignization inthe hope of providing some insights into how to effectively translate Chineseculture-specific items to the western culture.The paper has three major findings: First, to transmit Chinese culture, Mr. Lin mainlyemploys the foreignizing method of translation to preserve Chinese culture in his novel.Second, in translating absolute semantically vacant items from Chinese to English, Mr.Lin mainly adopts literal translation plus explanation and contextual amplification. Third,as regards semantically semi-vacant items, Mr. Lin mainly exploits the literal translationand transliteration to transmit Chinese culture. This paper also probes into the reasons ofLin Yutang’s choices.