A Study Of The Translation Of Cultural Words In A Tale Of Two Cities From The Perspective Of Resistant Translation Theory

The traditional translation study regarded translation as a simple transformation of language,focusing on the linguistic transformation between the source text and the target text.However,with the globalization of the world economy and the increasingly frequent cultural exchanges among countries,especially since the 1970 s,studies of western translation theories have shifted from language to culture,expanding the translation research to these fields: society,politics,ideology and so on.In the 1990 s,Venuti put forward the resistant translation theory,which criticized the traditional domesticating translation strategy and advocated the use of foreignizing translation strategy to highlight the foreignness of source language culture,resisting ethnocentrism and culture Narcissism,promoting cultural equality and cultural diversity,and finally enhancing the diversified development of culture.A Tale of Two Cites is one of the masterpieces of Dickens,a famous British realistic writer.The novel describes the social status of Britain and French in the 18 th Century,reflecting many cultural customs in British and French countries.Though reading this novel,Chinese readers can get a better understanding of the society and culture in British and French in 18 th century.This thesis is mainly guided by the resistant translation theory and analyzes the translations of cultural words in Zhang Ling and Zhang Yang's Chinese version of A Tale of Two Cities.After a careful study,the author finds that some English cultural words in A Tale of Two Cities are translated into Chinese rather perfectly,which is characterized by the following three aspects: 1)conveying both the cultural foreignness and the linguistic characteristics of the source text;2)conveying the cultural foreignness of the source text;3)conveying the linguistic characteristics of the source text.Meanwhile,the author also finds some other English cultural words in this novel are translated improperly into Chinese,which can be categorized into the following three problems: 1)distorting the cultural images of the source text;2)partly omitting the cultural images of the source text;3)totally losing the cultural images of the source text.The author puts forward the corresponding solutions under the guidance of Venuti's resistant translation theory: correcting the distorted cultural images;supplementing the partly-omitted cultural images;making up for the totally-lost cultural images.The author holds that the foreignizing translation of the cultural words in A Tale of Two Cities can preserve the foreignness of western culture and highlight the differences between western culture and Chinese culture.By adding notes,the translator offers more detailed explanation for the translated versions of the cultural words,which can clarify Chinese readers' confusion and misunderstanding caused by foreignizing translation.At the same time,the author corrects the improperly translated Chinese versions,which can,to some extent,make contributions to the spread of foreign culture in China.