Strategies For Translation Of Culture-loaded Words From The Perspective Of Susan Bassnett's Cultural Translation Theory

The translation of Chinese classics is an activity that travels across time and space.Alienation in space and time exists between the translator and the author of the source Chinese classics because of the differences between our time and ancient times,modern and ancient cultures.Therefore,translating Chinese classics into English is full of difficulties but with great value.That is because culture is becoming more and more important in the process of translation and it's a challenge to “translate” cultures across languages.Moreover,the translation of culture-loaded words is the key of transferring cultural meaning.This thesis focuses on C-E translation of culture-loaded words by translating the two parts about State Chu and Qu Yuan in the Chinese Classic Historical Records.Meanwhile,Susan Bassnett's cultural translation theory is applied in this thesis.According to Bassnett,translation should not be confined to the description of source text but is an activity that fulfills the functional equivalence in culture between the source text and target text,avoiding cultural losses.Presentation of the culture in the source text should be realized by translator as far as possible while target language readers should be considered.This thesis aims to analyze various translation strategies and skills applied in translating source text concerning cultural factors so that cultural functional equivalence can be fulfilled.Foreignization predominates over the domestication in translation culture-loaded words;meanwhile,the translator takes translation acceptability into consideration as much as possible.By the translation practice and case analysis,the study comes to the following conclusion in three aspects: translation of words denoting social status and customs,translation of words signifying peculiar objects,translation of the figurative expressions,and all these involve translation of traditional Chinese culture.First,translation of words denoting social status and customs.This part mainly includes words for official titles and customs.The official title was the symbol of one's social status in ancient China.Meanwhile,those official titles that appear in the source text had quite special Chinese characteristics,suggesting the title holders' different social position.And there are no corresponding English words or phrases for these titles.Therefore,transliteration was applied in the translation of those official titles,sometimes followed by annotation and explanatory attributive clause,to maintain the special Chinese cultural connotation.China and western countries have quite different lifestyles and expressions,so compensation,literal translation and annotation were used during the translation.Second,translation of words signifying objects used only in ancient China.This part mainly involves words for ancient tools,costumes and plants.With rich culture connotation,those words were translated in the way of literal translation,followed by annotation.Third,translation of figurative expressions.This section mainly discussed the translation of antithesis and parallelism.It is hard for the translator to translate the figures of speech of the source text in that English focuses on hypotaxis and Chinese emphasizes parataxis.The translator endeavors to find effective methods to interpret such “symmetry” aesthetic principles.For example,she translated such expressions with omission,literal translation,alliteration,etc.