A Study On The Strategies For Translating Modern Chinese Essays Into English From The Perspective Of Cultural Translation Theory

According to Wikipedia,an essay is,generally,a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument — but the definition is vague,overlapping with those of an article,a pamphlet,and a short story.Broadly speaking,all those articles which do not belong to verses can be called essays.In China,a country with a profound tradition of essay writing,the achievement of which is not second to that of poetry.Compared with other literary genres,essays have a unique charm for the reason that they often reflect definite themes in quite loose structures without rhyming,parallelism or antithesis.Meanwhile,as a record of daily life,essays reflect the authors' spiritual outlook to the greatest extent.It is the responsibility and mission of a translator to reveal unique cultures contained in Chinese essays as well as to reproduce original styles and features of them in other languages.And,both of the two requirements are also beneficial to promoting cultural exchanges among different nationalities,enhancing cultural self-confidence of Chinese people and improving national cultural soft power of China.Therefore,translation activities of Chinese essays should be attached great importance to.In fact,important criteria to evaluate the success of a translation lie in whether an English translation of a Chinese essay can be appreciated by English readers,whether it will be able to withstand the test of time and whether it can achieve the goal of promoting cultural exchanges.As is known to all,previous translation theories emphasized texts rather than cultures.However,cultural translation theory breaks the situation and provides a brand new perspective for translation studies as well as translation activities of translating Chinese essays into English.The thesis studies the English translation of modern Chinese essays from the perspective of cultural translation,which is a meaningful attempt.On the other hand,it also proves the feasibility and far-reaching significance of applying Bassnett's cultural translation theory to the English translation of Chinese essays.In the thesis,the author elaborately analyzes Professor Zhang Peiji's Selected Modern Chinese Essays(I)by applying three key concepts of Susan Bassnett's cultural translation theory,that is,seeking functional equivalence in the regard of culture,realizing cultural exchanges and catering to different needs.On this basis,various strategies and methods of the English translation of Chinese essays are summarized,such as domestication,foreignization,literal translation,free translation,amplification,omission,restructuring and annotation.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the reasons and goals of topic selection as well as main contents of the thesis.The second chapter mainly reviews the development of translation theory at home and abroad,points out the background,connotation,evolution and significance of Bassnett's theory,and summarizes the translation history of modern Chinese essays.In the third chapter,the author sums up the three characteristics of modern Chinese essays,i.e.,realness,casualness and beauty,and explains the reasons for choosing Zhang Peiji's Selected Modern Chinese Essays(I)as the case study.The fourth chapter puts forward some constructive suggestions and strategies for solving problems that existed in the English translation of Chinese essays under the broad framework of cultural translation theory.And the fifth chapter,the conclusion of the thesis,summarizes the main findings and limitations of the thesis.