Translation Strategies And Methods For Rural Cultural Elements In Literary Works: Pluralism And Option

The core of rural literature consists of “local flavor” and “folk images” and meanwhile rural cultural elements are fragments conveying the “local flavor” of rural literature.Therefore,it's indeed necessary to explore the translation strategy and method of rural cultural elements against the backdrop of Chinese culture “going out”.In the comparative reading of Mo Yan's Chinese and Goldblatt's English The Garlic Ballads,the author of the thesis finds that the translator has adopted different means when translating rural cultural elements: Some elements are retained,while others are abandoned;even with the same purpose to retain the rural elements,the translation strategies also vary.Faced with the different attitudes towards rural cultural elements in the original text and the multiple translation strategies and methods,the author of the thesis thus raises the following questions: Should rural cultural elements be retained or abandoned in the translation? Why should they be retained? Why should they be abandoned? Should they be either retained or abandoned at will? How should the translator translate rural cultural elements against the backdrop of Chinese culture “going out”? What can be concluded from the above questions is that: How to translate rural cultural elements in literary works against the backdrop of culture “going out”? In the translation field,the research on the translation of rural cultural elements has never been halted.As is shown by the results of the literature review,scholars usually hold conflicting opinions about the translation strategies and methods and the scholars who advocate retaining account for the largest proportion.However,few scholars discuss the translation of rural cultural elements from the perspective of retaining original literariness against the backdrop of Chinese culture “going out”.Therefore,it becomes the major task for this thesis to discuss the translation attitudes,strategies and methods of rural cultural elements in literary works against the backdrop of Chinese culture “going out”.As for the literariness,rural cultural elements play a vital role in identity recognition of characters,image projection of characters,geographical identification of the story and context affirmation of the story.There would be many inharmonious factors in the target text and the literariness in the original text would be lost if rural cultural elements were abandoned in the translation.At the same time,the western translation theorist Lawrence Venuti objected to the practice of domesticating other cultures in translation that has been prevailing for many years in western countries and advocated retaining foreignness as much as possible.Since Western culture has the demand for “cultural otherness” and China has adopted the cultural strategy of “going out”,retaining rural cultural elements is undisputed.So foreignization strategy should be a better choice for translating rural cultural elements against the backdrop of culture “going out”.However,the translation strategy of foreignization can not necessarily be fulfilled by excessive literal translation and rigid translation,which may prevent rural cultures from truly “going out” in the name of faithfulness.For the retained rural cultural elements in the English version,the author of the thesis has explored their translation strategies,methods and skills.And for the missing rural cultural elements,the author tries to retain them by retranslation so as to keep the local flavor and truly help Chinese rural culture “go out”.English version produced in this way ensures not only the target readers' understanding of China but more specifically their understanding of China's northeast Gaomi through reading The Garlic Ballads.