A Study On Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In The Note-taking Of Graverobbers

Language is not only a tool people use to express ideas and feelings, but also an important component and carrier of culture. Different languages determine different ways of thinking, behaviors and expressions of different nations. In the long course of development, Chinese people have invented a great many culture-loaded words with national features. Meanwhile, with the frequent communication between Chinese and western cultures, the translation of culture-loaded words has great significance to stimulate the friendly exchanges among all Chinese and western nations. The study on the translation of Chinese culture-loaded words, especially culture-loaded words in Chinese literature, can make western readers know Chinese traditional culture on a more comprehensive basis, and form a more intuitive understanding of contemporary Chinese people’s life philosophy and values.This paper discusses the translation of culture-loaded words in The Note-Taking of Graverobbers, which is about the grave robbing and first published in Start Chinese Net on December19th,2011with nine physical books. It is highly praised and starts the "grave robbing age" in Chinese popular fiction. In the novel, a large number of words and expressions with Chinese traditional cultural feature, like the colloquial expressions, graverobbers’jargons, Chinese tools for grave robbing, all kinds of ghosts, mysterious folklores and traditional customs are employed. In combination of her own translation practice, the author concentrates on the discussion of classification and translation methods of culture-loaded words.In the paper, the author classifies the culture-loaded words into four categories:they are the words related to grave-robbery, set phrases and vulgarisms, religious words as well as proper names. According to her analysis, five translation methods are adopted during translating the novel:they are literal translation, literal translation plus annotation, transliterations, transliteration plus annotation, substitution and paraphrase. And it is found that there are not only one translation method for each category of culture-loaded words in the novel, therefore, in order to achieve better effects, considering the writer’s intention and readers’cultural cognition, translators should translate flexibly so that readers of translation texts can have a relative accurate understanding of the cultural connotation and form or basically form a similar cognitive context to readers of the source text.It is hoped that this study will shed light on the translation of contemporary Chinese popular fiction, especially of the novels centralized Chinese cultural connotation and culture-loaded words and expressions, so that people of different languages and cultures hopefully cross the culture divide and achieve the end of cultural exchange.