A Study Of Translation Strategy Of Culture-loaded Terms In Lisao From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

As the carrier of a nation’s cultural information, culture-loaded terms contain arich variety of cultural images, being closely related to the culture of a specificcountry, reflecting one nation’s activity mode is peculiar to and usually distinct fromthat of another nation. During translation practice, whether we can smoothly fulfillour exchange largely depends on whether we can handle them effectively or not. Upto now, how to deal with them has been one of the fundamental issues in translationstudies. However, there exist cultural gaps from one nation to another and such gapsare attributable to different national history, to different social practice, to differentways of living and different geographical environment etc.With the further deepening of the economic and cultural exchange between andWestern countries, more and more readers from foreign nations are keen on getting abetter understanding of the profound Chinese culture. As a shining pearl of theAncient Chinese Classical Literature, Lisao does not only embody Quyuan’s immensecharm, but also gives full expression to certain fine qualities of the Chinese nation andpatriotism. To a larger extent, the poem manifests a lot of cultural connotations inancient China. In the process of translating, how to deal with the culture-loaded termsis definitely the key to target readers’ understanding of the Chinese culture andhistory, and thus has been accepted as one of the biggest obstacles for the C-Etranslation of Lisao.In accordance with Eugene Nida’s classification of culture and from theperspective of Skopos Theory, the author of this thesis presents a case study of Mr.Yang Xianyi’s Chinese to English version of Lisao; tackles some strategies andapproaches concerning how to do more proper translation of the culture-loaded termsin Lisao; and eventually comes to a conclusion that the study of Skopos Theory hastruly thrown much light on the translation of culture-loaded terms.In the process of this study,43culture-loaded terms are collected and sorted out.Through an analysis of the examples quoted from Yang Xianyi’s version, threestrategies are found, one is literal translation and another is liberal translation the third is annotation. In conformity with the principles of Skopos Theory and through ourproper use of different translation strategies, the best policy of doing the translation ofsuch terms is to guarantee our remaining faithful to the original text and meanwhileretaining the cultural connotative meanings of the words from the original text andlastly attaining the cross-culture communication aim. This study proves that allstrategies do not exist singly and are complimentary to each other. It is hoped that anall-round analysis of the translation of culture-loaded terms can be of great help tofuture researchers and meanwhile can be of realistic importance to learners oftranslation studies and its teaching.