A Contrastive Study On The Translation Strategies Of Culture-loaded Words In The Two English Versions Of Teahouse

Culture-loaded words,which are some special words that reflect the specific cultural elements,have always been the focus of translation study.Many scholars have focused on how to translate those culture-loaded words.In 1995,American linguist and translation theorist Lawrence Venuti had come up with the concept of foreignization and domestication.They are two translation strategies used to translate the words containing cultural elements,i.e.culture-loaded words.It is rather hard for translators to choose between foreignization,which demands the translator to get close to source language,and domestication,which asks the translator to get close to target language.Most researchers have only studied the translation strategies in a specific text,but not go further to analyze the translation methods under the translation strategies.As one of the most predominant dramas in the Chinese literary field,Teahouse won a fabulous reputation not only in China,but also in western countries.Teahouse contains a variety of culture-loaded words,embodying the unique cultural factors and elements of China.Therefore,teahouse does not only realize the literal value but also the cultural value.Although,a crowd of researchers have carried on the studies on the translation of Teahouse,a few of them studied the culture-loaded words in Teahouse with interest.Also,almost none of them adopted quantative approach to compare two versions translated by two translators with different nationalities.This paper intends to carry on a contrastive study on the translation strategies of culture-loaded words in the two English versions of Teahouse,i.e.Ying Ruocheng's version and John Howard-Gibbon's version.Meanwhile,it aims to find out the possible cultural factors that may influence the two translators' choices of translation strategies of culture-loaded words.Two hundred and ninety three culture-loaded words in Teahouse(Chinese version)were selected as the research data of the present study.After collecting data,the corresponding words of those 293 culture-loaded words in the two English versions were marked separately.Then the five types of culture-loaded words were manually identified on the basis of the classification of culture-loaded words made by Nida.After that,the translation strategies and methods of those culture-loaded words were distinguished by the author according to Xiong Bing's classification.They were then analyzed by adopting the quantitative approach.By analysis of the research data,the results reveal that there are two similarities in using translation strategies of culture-loaded words between the two English versions of Teahouse,i.e.Ying's version and Howard's version.In aspect of domestication,the two translators both prefer to adopt free translation to translate culture-loaded words.It is due to the distinguishing features of free translation.It requires the translators to minimize the understanding difficulties that caused by cultural differences between two languages.In aspect of foreignization,both Ying and Howard seldom choose word-for-word translation to deal with culture-loaded words in Teahouse.Since word-for-word translation only concentrates on the form of the source text,it is hard to convey the original text's meaning.There are also two differences between Ying's version and Howard's version in the use of the translation strategies of culture-loaded words.On one hand,Ying is inclined to adopt domestication,while Howard favors to adopt foreignization to translate culture-loaded words in general.On the other hand,as for appellation,Ying chooses to take foreignization,whereas Howard is willing to use domestication.This is because their purposes of translating Teahouse are quite different.Ying translates Teahouse with the purpose of performing Teahouse at the stage in the west.Therefore,his translation focuses on colloquial and understandable expressions to make his version smooth and performable for actors as well as intelligible for audience.However,Howard translates Teahouse on purpose of helping people learn Chinese and Chinese culture.He insists on being faithful to the original text.This study combines the translation strategy with the practical corpus to provide a new perspective of literary translation.Also,it may improve translators' intercultural awareness by exploring the cultural factors which may influence translators' choices of translation strategies.