On Cultural Loss In The English Translations Of Luotuo Xiangzi From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Language is the carrier of culture.The discrepancy of different nations in way of thinking and cultural traditions endows quite different cultural connotations to their languages and constraints their way of using language.Due to the huge difference between C hinese and Western culture,there are vast disparities between C hinese and English,and both have their own culture-specific items,namely words and expressions conveying a certain kind of cultural connot ations which cannot be found in other languages.With China's rising international status,spreading and promoting Chinese culture to the world has become an important strategy of our country.For this purpose,how to deal with the culture-specific items is of great significance to the translation of literary works.The translator should not only strive to translate their meaning correctly,but also attach great importance to communicate the cultural elements implied in them.Luotuo Xiangzi,Lao She's magnum opus,is a masterpiece of Beijing flavor literature.It has been translated into different languages and has received tremendous response from the western world since its coming out.It embodies C hinese traditional culture and distinct Beijing characteristics and contains a lot of culture-specific items unique to the Chinese society and culture.This thesis chooses Shi Xiaojing's and Howard Goldblatt's translations of Luotuo Xiangzi as its object of study.From the perspective of Relevance Theory,it analyzes translation strategies and methods of different categories of culture items in the fiction adopted by the two translators.It further probes into cultural loss which exists in the two translations as well as the causes of such loss.The author hopes that this thesis will arouse more in-depth thinking about the study and practice of the translation of culture-specific items.