C-E Translation Of Culture-specific Items In News Under The Postcolonial Theory

With the rapid development of the whole world, under the background of globalization, the world has turned into a global village in which the frequency of the exchanges and communication of politics, economy and culture has increased sharply among different countries and nations, thanks to the swift, convenient and efficient spread of information. Newspapers and magazines, which function as the pioneers of information communication,help the process of culture exchange and provide the whole world with better and more effective conjunction. Culture-specific items refer to the words which contain cultural connotation of different countries and nations as well as the most direct and subtle reflection of the power and strength of the political, economic and cultural aspects of the countries. China possesses a rather long history and rich culture, and its language, which was nourished by the aged yet lively Chinese culture, is particularly abundant in culture-specific items. Following this trend, this thesis intends to discuss the translation of Chinese culture-specific items in Time and China Daily.After redefining the cultural translation on the basis of the postcolonial translation studies background, this thesis discusses the translation strategies of culture-specific items by reviewing the work of Aixela, Newmark, Zhang Nanfeng and Xu Mingwu, and summarizing the strategies into seven categories. A comparative study on translation of Chinese culture-specific items (CSIs) in Time and China Daily shows that the two media adopted different translation methods on different kinds of CSI. Time is prone to be flexible in word selection to make new translations while China Daily concentrates more on the accuracy of meaning. Then, three underlying factors that affect the translation differences are elaborated, namely ideology,purpose of news and readership.Through the comparative research of translation of Chinese culture-specific items in Time and China Daily, this thesis hopes to shed some light on the Chinese-English translation in this field.