Translation Of Contemporary Chinese Culture-Loaded Words

As an important component of Chinese contemporary literature, modern critical realist stories have attracted wide readership and deserve some academic attention. Many stories belonging to this literary genre distinctly reveal and criticize and satirize the deplorable corruption of contemporary officialdom and deteriorating moral standards existing in Chinese society. As these stories contain a considerable amount of culture specific terms and culture loaded words, translation of these stories would pose a special challenge for the translator in an effort to transplant the cultural seeds laden in these terms into the English culture. Another interesting challenge for the translators of contemporary critical stories is posed by cultural default that commonly exists in association with these culture-loaded terms.Opinions regarding translation norms and standards differ widely among translators and translation theorists. This diversity of translation ideas is especially evident where translation approaches and strategies relating to cultural elements become the major topic of discussion. It is generally believed that the success of literary translation to a considerable degree depends not only on faithfulness to original works but also on the adept transplantation of the culture factors contained therein.The objective of this translation practice and this report is therefore to explore and verify applicable strategies and techniques for dealing with culture-loaded terms and cultural default contained in about a dozen short stories chosen from some main stream literary journals published in the past two years. The report draws the conclusion that culture-loaded words carrying rich culture default in Chinese contemporary critical-realism short stories by adopting some strategies. Among these strategies, literal translation with footnote and paraphrasing are constantly employed and transliteration, substitution and omission are rarely used.This report consists of four chapters. Chapter One introduces the source text, the objective and the significance of this translation practice report, as well as a brief introduction of every text. Chapter Two presents the theoretical background, including the theory of critical realism, culture-loaded words and culture default. Chapter Three offers case analysis for the objective of exploring and verifying applicable strategies and techniques for dealing with culture-loaded terms and cultural default. Chapter Four offers some concluding remarks and summarizes insights gained from the translation practice project.