A Comparative Study Of Culture-loaded Words Translation In The Two English Versions Of Bian Cheng From The Perspective Of Communicative And Semantic Translation

From a perspective of Newmark’s communicative and semantic translation, this thesis examines the culture-loaded word translations in the two English versions of Bian Cheng, translated by Gladys Yang and Jeffery C. Kinkley respectively. As one of Shen Congwen’s representative works, Bian Cheng is a novel with strong local flavor, which demonstrates the cultures and customs in Chadong, a small border town in Xiang Xi(west Hunan); and the pure love of Cuicui shines the kindness and goodness of humanity. The abundant cultural words and expressions in this short novel can generally be classified into five types:(1) ecology;(2) material culture;(3) social culture(work and leisure);(4) customs(organizations, activities, procedures, concepts); and(5) gestures and habits. This study compares the procedures and methods adopted by the translators in rendering the same(or the same type) cultural terms. By examining the various contextual factors, such as the purpose of text, the linguistic co-text, the cultural or the linguistic level of readerships, etc., the roles played by communicative and semantic translation in dealing with different types of culture-loaded words are discussed.Based on previous discussions of the relationship between translation and culture, the qualitative as well as quantitative methods are adopted to study Bian Cheng as well as its translations. It is found that Bian Cheng belongs to the expressive text-type, and thus most of it need to be semantically translated. But to achieve the two goals of translation —accuracy and economy, as well as to avoid the results being so far away from TT readers that they cannot understand, the culture-loaded words in it need to differentially treated: communicatively or semantically. In the two English versions, most of the ecological culture-loaded words are communicative translations, which are closer to the TT readers; while gestures or habits are usually semantically treated. For the other three types of cultural terms, the methods adopted by the two translators may either coincide or disagree, but the translation procedures are usually different. On the whole, Kinkley’s version is more semantic and detailed by preserving the cultural elements, whereas Yang’s version is more communicative; the typical procedures for communicative translation are functional equivalent, descriptive equivalent, omission and componential analysis, and those for semantic translation include transference, literal translation, and translation couplets. Therefore, it can be concluded that to appropriately render those cultural terms in literary works, the translator should keep both the ST author and TT readers in view, and make decisions on whether they should be treated communicatively or semantically after examining various contextual factors.The study aims to provide a view on the relationships between the ST author, the translator, the TT readers, the ST and the TT by examining how cultural elements in the two English versions of Bian Cheng have been dealt with. In doing so, the purpose of this thesis is to show the explanatory power and reference value of Newmark’s dual theory for actual translation practice, as well as its guiding significance for translation as a cross-cultural activity.