Translation Of Culture-loaded Expressions From The Perspective Of Semantic /communicative Translation

As economic globalization intensifies around the world, cultural communications among nations are becoming increasingly frequent. Chinese culture has attracted world-wide attention as China increases its comprehensive strength. As one of the major media reflecting the culture of the Chinese ethnic group,literature work is the one manifesting the diversity of the culture. Large quantity of culture-loaded expressions as readers notice in literature works are the ones with rich cultural connotation and ethnic peculiarities. Culture varies from each other in national history, social system, geographical environment,and lifestyle and so on. Translation of culture-loaded expressions facilitates cultural transmission; on the other hand, it is a dilemma which puzzled many translators in this field. Translation is popularly regarded as a dynamic process, in which cultural difference calls for exhaustive endeavor. How to reproduce the stylistic connotations observed in Chinese literature, and to help target readers get full access to Chinese spirit in an effective way, are two respects of great attention.Modern Chinese essays characterize the peculiarities of the Chinese ethnic group, and many of them have been translated into such languages like English. Taking Selected Modern Chinese Essays translated by Prof. Zhang Peiji as research subject, and taking semantic and communicative translation proposed by Peter Newmark as theoretical framework, this thesis focuses on how culture-loaded expressions were translated from Chinese into English. After a detailed review of previous studies on translation of culture-loaded expressions, C-E translation of modern Chinese essays, and theoretical essentials of Newmark’s theory, the thesis defines and makes a contrast between semantic and communicative translation, summarizes the stylistic characteristics of modern Chinese essays, and classifies culture-loaded expressions. Qualitative and quantitative research on the data collected indicate that, in some cases, Prof.Zhang adopted semantic translation approach, intending to preserve semantic meanings of culture-loaded expressions while retaining their original linguistic structure, and to reveal the process of how writers think.The research also indicates that, in many cases, Prof. Zhang placed much weight on target readers’ reception and adopted communicative translation approach for translating culture-loaded words, so to make target readers feel as closely as source readers do. In some cases, it seems efficient if semantic translation is adopted with reference to communicative translation.