On The Translation Strategies Of Culture-specific Items

As Mo Yan won the 2012‘s Nobel Prize for Literature, Howard Goldblatt‘s translation has become the focus in translation studies. Howard Goldblatt has translated about 50 modern and contemporary novels of more than 30 Chinese writers since 1970‘s. Xia Zhiqing hailed Howard Goldblatt as ―the chief translator of Chinese modern and contemporary literature‖ and American famous writer John Updike praised Howard Goldblatt as the ―midwife‖ of Chinese modern and contemporary literature.Lao She‘s Luotuo Xiangzi is a classical modern novel written in vernacular Chinese, which has been translated into 17 different languages. Luotuo Xiangzi has four English versions with translators Evan King, James, Shi Xiaojing and Howard Goldblatt respectively. Howard Goldblatt‘s 2010‘s version is the latest English version. Howard Goldblatt planned to translate the novel twenty years ago hoping to give the Chinese modern literary classic a ―complete, faithful and readable‖ English version.Spanish translator Aixelá observed eleven translation methods in translating culture-specific items from three Spanish translated versions of American writer‘s detective novel. Zhang Nanfeng proposed that Aixelá‘s classification of translation methods of culture-specific items was more comprehensive and rational. Luotuo Xiangzi is a highly culture-loaded novel vividly depicting local customs of old Beijing. According to Nida‘s classifications of cultural elements in translation, the study classifies the culture-specific items in Luotuo Xiangzi into material culture-specific items, social culture-specific items, religious culture-specific items and linguistic culture-specific items and analyzes the translation methods and translation strategies in Howard Goldblatt‘s version as well as factors influencing Howard Goldblatt‘s choice of translation strategies with reference to Aixelá‘s culture-specific item translation theory.The study has the following findings. Firstly, Howard Goldblatt‘s translation methods of culture-specific items include transliteration, linguistic(non-cultural) translation, intratexual gloss, limited universalization, absolute universalization, naturalization and deletion. Among the seven translation methods, absolute universalization, linguistic(non-cultural) translation and naturalization are three main translation methods Howard Goldblatt adopts; secondly, domestication is the main translation strategy while foreignization is the complementary translation strategy; thirdly, the factors influencing Howard Goldblatt‘s choice of translation methods and translation strategies include the imbalance of cultural acceptance, the translator‘s translation ideas, expectation of target readers and previous translated versions and established version.