On The Translating Pattern Of Alien Sources In Feng Ru Fei Tun

Feng Ru Fei Tun, as a classical representative masterpiece of Mo Yan, bearsquite a few alien sources for the writer’s fabulous language styles and vivid images ofsome expressions, hence recreates the society and cultural context of the last halfcentury. Language is the carrier of culture, and this novel saturated with Chineseunique linguistic expressions and customs has gained a wide readership and greatreputation in the West. Thus in translating, the successful conveyance of these aliensources can help English readers further recognize Chinese culture and customs, andeffectively promote cross-cultural exchange and guide translation practices in a sense.However, previous studies on Feng Ru Fei Tun and its English version are lesstouched upon and the research on its alien source is barely referred to. Hence thisresearch, taking Professor He Yuanjian’s Conceptual Mapping Theory as a theoreticalbasis, aims to explore that the application of four cognitive translation strategies(trans-coding, paraphrasing, substitution and deletion) into the translation of fivetypes of alien sources (linguistic, social, political, religious and material concepts) bybuilding a bilingual database of alien sources, then attempts to sum up its translatingpattern and dig the possible underlying reasons, and finally compares it with ProfessorHe’s research results and testifies He’s Conceptual Mapping Theory empirically andtheoretically.The major findings of this research are summarized as follows:(1) there are305alien sources in Chinese-English bilingual parallel database, and alien sources inFeng Ru Fei Tun can be classified into five categories: linguistic concepts, social concepts, political concepts, religious concepts and material concepts, in whichlinguistic concepts takes up122cases, and the rest are58,47,41and37casesrespectively.(2) Among the four cognitive translation strategies (trans-coding,paraphrasing, substitution and deletion), according to statistical results, trans-codingtakes up the largest proportion, paraphrasing ranks the second place, substitution thethird, and the deletion the least, which is respectively53%,33%,9%and5%. Thetranslating pattern of alien sources in Big Breasts&Wide Hips presents: trans-coding> paraphrasing> substitution> deletion.(3) Compared with He Yuanjian’sobservation on the translation pattern of alien sources, this research verifies He’sresults as a whole (trans-coding> paraphrasing> substitution> deletion). And thiscurrent study also proves He’s observation in the following aspects: the politicalconcepts in Feng Ru Fei Tun testifies that sensitive text like Chinese governmentWhite Papers can’t be substituted at all, which turns to be only trans-coded withoutannotation basically.(4) Different categories in alien sources show the distinctivetranslating patterns for the cultural uniqueness or the sharing extent between thesource language and the target language, and the translator’s intention affects a lot inthe choices of strategies.This present study testifies that Conceptual Mapping Theory can be used toexplain how alien sources are translated by four cognitive translation strategies andhow cognitive constraints influence the translating process of alien sources, whichbroadens the empirical research of the theory; in translating alien sources, no matterwhich kind of cognitive translation strategy is employed, the translator should try toretain the cultural connotative and associative meanings of alien sources.