On The Translation Of Chinese Culture-Specific Items:a Case Study On Insights Into Chinese Culture:Chinese Porcelain

At present, almost all the China-based museums have English captions of porcelain for the international friends. But if we observe the English captions carefully in the National Museum of China, the Palace Museum or even the Jingdezhen Ceramics Museum, problems show up like inconsistency of translation and format and lack of adequate explanation or introduction to the Chinese culture. All these problems will hinder the promotion of the precious ceramics of China.Standardized English captions of cultural relics play an important role in the promotion of Chinese culture. CSIs (Culture-Specific Items), culturally incomprehensible or acceptable to the common target readers, get worldwide attention. The long history and brilliant culture endow the Chinese language with rich and various Culture-Specific Items, which can be seen in the translation of Chinese culture. The study of Translating Culture-Specific Items would raise China’s worldwide position and then contribute to the promotion of Chinese culture.The Spanish translator Javier Franco Aixela put forward11kinds of strategies for cultural specific items. In the Chinese-English translation of Insights into Chinese culture:Chinese Porcelain, I analyze the text with his theory and use it to guide the translation practice. In this paper, I also analyze the situation of ceramic translation in China, define the CSIs (Culture-Specific Items) and list strategies, and then conclude the translation method on the basis of my translation version, and finally discuss the guidance of Aixela’s theory to ceramic translation.