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An Ethical Analysis On The Translation Of Culture-specific Items In The English Version Of Wei Cheng

Posted on:2019-11-24Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:L Y HeFull Text:PDF
GTID:2405330548469094Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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Wei Cheng is one of the masterpieces of Qian Zhongshu,who is a brilliant scholar in the twentieth century in China.In this novel,culture-specific items play a significant role in depicting the characters and in presenting the Chinese cultural flavor to its readers.Qian makes the most efforts to describe the protagonist Fang Hung-chien,who reflects the theme of “besiegement” in his life.Thus,how the translators deal with the culture-specific items related to Fang Hung-chien becomes one of the key factors in whether his character and the Chinese cultural flavor are completely represented to western readers in the translated text.Chesterman's ethics of representation,ethics of service,ethics of communication,norm-based ethics and ethics of commitment provide translators with a multi-dimensional perspective to regularize their behavior during the translation process,which aims to achieve cross-cultural communication between different countries.Hence,this paper utilizes this theory as the framework,in order to explore what translation strategies the translators adopt to deal with the culture-specific items related to Fang Hung-chien and to what extent are those culture-specific items represented in Fortress Besieged from the perspective of Translation Ethics.The conclusions of this research can be drawn as follows: firstly,the translators adopt eleven translation strategies to render the culture-specific items related to Fang Hung-chien,among which extra-textual gloss(23.92%)and linguistic translation(22.97%)are two main strategies to retain the original culture-specific items and absolute universalization(23.44%)is the main strategy to substitute the original culture-specific items.Secondly,in Fortress Besieged,when the translators deal with the culture-specific items related to Fang Hung-chien,the rate of complete representation of those culture-specific items is ethics of representation(90.10%),ethics of service(2.63%),ethics of commitment(55.17%),norm-based ethics(22.22%)as well as ethics of communication(78.57%).Furthermore,among 139 culture-specific items related to Fang Hung-chien,83 culture-specific items are completely represented,50 culture-specific items are partly represented and 6 culture-specific items are not represented in the translated text.This kind of culture-specific items' translation obviously shows that Fang Hung-chien's character and Chinese cultural flavor are represented to a large extent in Fortress Besieged.Eventually,this research hopes to make some contribution to the translation of culture-specific items in literary works and to provide some enlightenment for the transmission of Chinese culture.
Keywords/Search Tags:Wei Cheng, Culture-specific item, Translation strategies, Translation Ethics
PDF Full Text Request
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