Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In Fortress Besieged From The Cognitive View Of Translation

Due to the differences in geographical conditions, lifestyles, social systems, historical backgrounds, religious beliefs, ways of thinking as well as social customs and habits, different countries have different cultures. This can be seen from the literary works of a certain country. As language is the carrier of culture and word is the basic unit of language, culture-loaded words, which abound in cultural information, are of great significance to the study of translation. In Chinese literary works, there are many culture-loaded words, which, in light of its role of directly or indirectly reflecting the distinctive history and cultural information of the Chinese nation, have played an essential role in transmitting the Chinese culture to other countries.Fortress Besieged was written by Qian Zhongshu, and it took him a long period of time and much energy. It was composed out of the author’s life experiences. Generally speaking, a book with trivial plots cannot achieve success without superb verbal expressions. As Qian Zhongshu was at his best in terms of the language used in Fortress Besieged, one should not only pay attention to the plots without appreciating its language when reading the book. If so, one will fail to catch the essence of Fortress Besieged, for what makes it most successful and admirable lies in its excellent verbal expressions. There are many words and phrases that reflect Chinese traditional culture and philosophical thinking, such as words concerning appellation, religion, color, season and idiom, allusion as well as proverbs. These culture-loaded words, which carry national culture information and embody national culture characteristics, have played an important role in cross-cultural communication between China and western countries. Thus, the translation of these culture-loaded words not only contributes to the transmission of Chinese culture but also promotes the mutual understanding of Chinese and western culture.However, the specificity and complexity of cultural meaning bring great difficulties to translation between Chinese and English, which in turn poses daunting challenges to translators in translating these culture-loaded words. In order to cope with the difficulties caused by cultural differences in the process of translation and reduce cultural chasms, translation theorists both at home and abroad have come up with many translation theories and methods, mainly from the perspective of linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, text analysis and cross-cultural communication. However, they all neglect an important perspective, which is cognition. Western scholars precede their Chinese counterparts in discussing translation from the perspective of cognition. For example, German scholar Kussmaul focused on the creativity of translation from a perspective of cognitive process of creative thinking. China’s cognitive research on translation dates back to the 1980 s under the influence of western translatology. For example, Wang Yin put forward cognitive view of translation based on both western and Chinese translatology.Therefore, this thesis will discuss the translation of culture-loaded words in Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged from the Cognitive View of Translation. It will analyze the feasibility of Cognitive View of Translation to the translation of culture-loaded words in Fortress Besieged and when the Cognitive View of Translation is applied to the translation, it will produce a better translation. Thus, this thesis will select out the translations of a number of culture-loaded words, some of which are misinterpreted by the translators due to improper understanding of those words and then give a more proper translation from the Cognitive View of Translation. Besides, some translation strategies will also be introduced. This new perspective will serve as a new guideline for translation activities, improve the translator’s translation competence and further facilitate the transmission of Chinese culture.