The Descriptive Translation Theory As Guidance In The Translation Of Chinese Cultural Elements In English Literature Work

As the global cultural communication becomes more and more frequent, a special kind of literature work begins to thrive, that is, describing a country culture in another country's language, such as The Good Earth written by American writer Pearl S. Buck. Thus, the translation of this kind of literature work is also special, especially when it comes to cultural elements, which can be regarded as a cultural back translation.Emerged in 1970s, descriptive translation studies (DTS) advocates that translation activities be examined against the social and cultural background, which transcends the limitation of traditional translation theories. The source-language-oriented study perspective is discarded, and more extra-textual factors such as social, historical and cultural factors are taken into consideration. Based on the translation of Bapo, this article analyses specific examples with DTS, especially the initial norms and the operation norms, to discuss the choice of words and cultural expressions, as well as the ways, in terms of word choice, sentence structure, dialogue translation, and the translation of implication of a statement, of translating the Chinese cultural elements in English literature.