Study On The English Translation Of Chinese Idioms Under Cultural Translation Theory

Cultural diversity is the trend of world development.The Belt and Road Initiative requires not only the collaboration of policies,facilities,trade,finance and public support,but also cultural communication and cooperation.The concept and initiative of The Belt and Road has far-reaching strategic significance in promoting our cultural communication and development and ensuring our cultural and economic exchanges with neighboring countries.The construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21 stCentury Maritime Silk Road is an important strategy for China to comprehensively deepen reforms and create a new level of opening-up.Cultural communication relying on The Belt and Road is a must for accelerating the “going-out” of culture and building the foreign cultural strategy of the new era.The range of going-out of Chinese culture largely depends on the effect of translation.Culture and language are interdependent and integrated.And culture-loaded words,as the fruit of the blending of language and culture,well reflect the historic culture,local customs and practices,and life style of a nation.Therefore,the essence of language translation lies in cultural exchange.It is crucial to achieve cultural transplantation through effective and reasonable translation.The discussion about English translation of culture-loaded words of Chinese idioms in a cultural perspective can retain the cultural characteristics of the source language and promote cross-cultural communication.This thesis studies the English translation of Chinese idioms in terms of cultural translation theory,and makes thorough analysis and discussion on the translation of the idioms in the English version of The Story of the Stone translated by the famous scholar and translator Hawkes.The thesis emphasizes the significance of cultural factors in idiom translation.According to the analysis on different typical idioms in Hawkes' translation of The Story of the Stone,the factors affecting the translation quality mainly lie in the cultural level despite the writing style of the translator,specifically,cultural default,cultural difference,and cultural misreading which result in different understanding of the source text and then inevitably the deviation in translation.Different translators have different understanding of the cultural factors in idioms,which make some parts of the translation inadequate to convey the cultural connotation of the source text.The cultural translation theory emphasizes the roles of culture and translator in translation,giving the translator much freedom during translation.Under the guidance of cultural translation theory,it is possible to make the target text play a role in target-language culture basically consistent with that of the source text in the source-language culture,and then,to some extent,give the readers the feeling similar to that of the source language readers.The English readers can empathize with Chinese readers when reading the translation of The Story of the Stone,comprehending the thoughts and feelings of the poet as well as appreciating the extensive and profound Chinese language and culture.This has integrated their subconscious native culture with the source language culture.The thesis has five parts of analysis and description.Chapter I elaborates the features of idioms and their meaning for cultural exchange,explaining the background,purpose,significance,research level and research method of the thesis.The second part is literature review,mainly presenting the translation of culture-loaded words under cultural translation theory and the status quo and development trend of Chinese and foreign researches on the translation of The Story of the Stone.The third part is theoretical basis,explaining the cultural translation theory,cultural default and compensation,the translatability and untranslatability of culture,so as to provide certain theoretical support for subsequent elaboration of translation skills and methods.The fourth part takes Hawkes' translation of The Story of the Stone as an example and analyzes the idiom translation in the book under cultural translation theory.The last part is a summary,analyzing the inadequacy of the thesis and the outlook for the future in an attempt to provide certain references for future translation,which is a good promotion for in-depth cultural exchange.