Strategies For Translating Cultural Words In Historical Books

The Victorian City is a historical book about the street life in the nineteenth-century London written by British historian Judith Flanders.It investigates Londoners' life in every particularity.The translation report mainly focuses on the cultural words and the translation strategies to deal with them.This translation report consists of four parts:description of the translation task,translating process,case analysis and conclusion.The first part is an introduction to the translation task,presenting background information and textual analysis of the source text.The second part is a description of the translating process which includes preparations before translating,detailed procedures during translating activities and proofreading after translating.The third part,based on Newmark's classification of cultural words,analyzes how to apply Aixela's culture-specific items translation strategy to this translation project.In this translation project,when translating names of organizations and housings,the most frequently adopted translation strategy is extratextual gloss.The translation of customs mainly employs the universalization strategy.The translation of religious terms and names of occupations adopts the strategy of deletion and extratextual gloss.The choice between these two strategies is made depending on the degree of importance of the cultural words in the source text.The last part is a conclusion of the report containing translation experience learned by the author.The Victorian City describes life in London in every particularity,providing a reference for China's urbanization and city construction.Besides,this report attaches importance to translation of cultural words in historical texts and analyzes translation strategies to deal with them,providing guidance for the translation of similar texts.