A Study On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In Wolf Totem From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

As the world economic integration trends have been strengthening further, cross-cultural activitiesbetween Chinese and western cultures are continually getting deeper, and, one of the important ways to thisis the translation of literary works. Literary works, just like a mirror, reflect people’s real life, every aspectsof the society at a certain age, and they are the miniature of a social culture. Therefore the due attentionshould be paid to the study of literary translation, in which the translation of culture should be highlighted.The study of a literary work is the study of the culture to which it belongs. After the publishing of LangTuteng, lots of readers have been attracted by its special narrative perspectives and interesting themes. In2007,—the English version of Lang Tuteng translated by Howard Goldblatt won Man Asian Literary Prizein Hongkong. The translation of this book is a great success, especially the people, life style, geographicaland ecological environment described in this book are totally distinctive, which lead to the splendid ofculture-loaded words. As a famous and successful translator, Howard Goldblatt successfully transmitted theessence of these words. It is necessary to have a close look at it so as to provide some useful experience inexporting Chinese literary works,Eco-translatology broke ice in2001by Hu Gengshen, which regards translation as a kind oftranslator’s selective adaptation and adaptive selection to the translational eco-environment, during thisperiod, translator, as the central and dominant element, adapts the translational eco-environment and selectsthe target text actively and creatively. Translational eco-environment which is formed by internal andexternal aspects is a diverse-element integration that influences translator’s adaptation and selection.Adopting descriptive method, in the light of eco-translatology, the present thesis studies the translationstrategies and methods used by Howard Goldblatt in transmitting culture-loaded words in Wolf Totem andtries to solve the three problems as follow: firstly, what is the internal translational eco-environment towhich Goldblatt needs to adapt in translating culture-loaded words in Lang Tuteng, mainly including hiseducational background, translation experiences and achievements, translation thoughts. Secondly, what isthe external translational eco-environment to which Goldblatt needs to adapt in translating culture-loadedwords in Lang Tuteng, mainly from the client or publisher and target readers, the source text----the contentand narrative style. Thirdly, based on the category of Nida’s five classifications of culture-loaded words,according to incomplete statistics, the author selected90samples of such words, then according to the characteristics of culture-loaded words in Lang Tuteng and Chinese linguistic uniqueness, further dividedthese words into different branches, for example, social culture-loaded words are further divided into threegroups: social culture-loaded words about history; social culture-loaded words about Chinese literature andlegends; social culture-loaded words in Cultural Revolution period. On the foundation of this scientificdivision, taking the90examples, in the light of eco-translatology, through comparing the Chinese versionwith English version of each example carefully, the author describes the translation strategies and methodsadopted by Howard Goldblatt as the consequence of adapting to different translational eco-environment.Finally, the thesis makes the conclusion that in the process of translating culture-loaded words in WolfTotem, Howard Goldblatt adapted himself to different translational eco-environment, and made activereactions to it and creative selection. Both foreignization and domestication were flexibly used by him,.correspondingly, different translation methods including literal translation, literal plus annotation,transliteration under foreignization strategy, and free translation, corresponding, addition, omission,abstraction under domestication strategy were used in transferring the essence of culture-loaded words inWolf Totem, which at most transmitted the cultural elements to the target readers.