| In1990, Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere came up with the concept of“cultural turn” in their book which indicates that scholars have shifted their attentionfrom the mechanical decoding and encoding process to a complicated communicativeactivity involving different cultures. They maintain that translation is not only theswitching of linguistic code, but also a communication between different cultures.Chinese scholar Liu Miqing also came up with the cultural compatibility principle andregarded it as an essential part in evaluating translation. The cultural translationtheory is approaching maturity in China.Written by Ch’ien Chung-shu, Wei Cheng has been widely regarded as one of themasterpieces of Chinese literature and was soon translated into several foreignlanguages. Among them, the English version by Jeanne Kelly and Nathan K.Mao waspublished in1979. The numerous culture-loaded words and expressions in the novelhave reflected the unique characteristics of traditional Chinese culture, but have alsobrought some obstacles to the cross-culture communication.Based on the cultural translation theory by Susan Bassnett and Liu Miqing, theauthor of this thesis will conduct a detailed study on the translation of culture-loadedwords and expressions in Fortress Besieged. The translators have employed acombination of foreignization and domestication strategies, which are complementarywith each other. Foreignization method will help preserve the original flavor of thesource language, while domestication increases the expressiveness of the targetlanguage. Besides, the purpose of translation and the type of the text will alsodetermine the choice of translation strategies.Currently many of the excellent Chinese literary works are still waiting to beintroduced to the world. It is expected that this study on the translation ofculture-loaded words and expressions in Fortress Besieged will produce a positiveinfluence in the translation of Chinese literature. |
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