Allusion Translation In Friends From The Cultural Translation Theory Perspective

Occupying an indispensable position in English language and literature, English allusions contain extremely rich contents involving myths, fables, scriptures, folklores and historical events, as well as profound and incisive words.Accordingly, as an important tool of interlingual communication, the quality of allusion translation determines directly the logical level, absorbing level and the acceptance level of readers’understandings. Hence, how to maintain the original cultural flavor as much as possible, while conveying its rich cultural connotations with equivalent effect in allusion translation is a very tricky problem for translators.At present, most scholars both at home and abroad are doing the research on allusion translation from the linguistic perspective, yet when the "cultural turn" has become a trend, it seems necessary for us to study allusion translation from the cultural perspective, as literature works, movies and TV programs serve as major carriers to disseminate culture.Friends is a very famous American sitcom which is widely acknowledged in the world, and is regarded as the encyclopedia reflecting American culture. It involves a large numbers of words with rich social backgrounds and cultural features-allusions, thus, posing a big challenge to translators on how to convey and deal with the cultural differences effectively. Therefore in this thesis, based on Susan Bassnett’s culture translation theory and Ritva Leppihalme’s research on allusions, the author will analyze the strategies for allusion translation appeared in Friends at large, probed into the trend of cultural translation under the background of globalization, in hope of finding some inspirations in allusion translation.