A Study On Translation Methods Of Culture-loaded Words In Red Sorghum Under The Guidance Of Semantic And Communicative Strategies

Along with the rapid development of the Chinese economy, more and more foreigners are interested in Chinese culture. As one of the main windows to spread Chinese culture, literature is the reflection of social culture and full of cultural connotation. And the research of how to accurately translate these culture-loaded words in literary works to help the target readers understand Chinese culture and promote the development of cross cultural communication is of great significance. The traditional translation only focuses on the language rather than cultural factors. However, the experts in translation have recognized that the cultural issues in translation are more important. In China, the famous scholar, Professor Wang Zuoliang (2000) said when referring to the relationship between culture and translation:"The greatest difficulty in translation lies in the difference between two cultures." Here, under the guidance of Pete Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation strategy, this thesis takes the English version of the Red Sorghum which is rich in culture-loaded words by Howard Goldblatt as the research object and analyzes how Howard Goldblatt translates these culture-loaded words in the novel.Firstly, this thesis defines semantic translation and communicative translation, points out differences and similarities between them and reviews the previous research on translation of culture-loaded words at home and abroad. Then, the author gives the definition of culture-loaded words, summarizes Nida’s classification of the culture and picks out the major culture-loaded words of each type and their corresponding translation from the original and translated version. Finally, based on Pete Newmark’s translation theory, a detailed analysis of the translation methods of culture-loaded words in the novel is conducted. Through discussion and critical analysis of the data, conclusions are reached as follows:(1) literal translation and transliteration are effective translation methods to deal with the culture-loaded words in Red Sorghum under the guidance of semantic strategy;(2) free translation, amplification and substitution can be employed to translate the culture-loaded words in Red Sorghum under the guidance of communicative strategy;(3) annotation can be adopted to translate the culture-loaded words in Red Sorghum under the guidance of the combination of semantic and communicative strategy, namely "correlative translation"...