A Study Of C-E Translation Strategies And Methods Of Culture-loaded Words From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Cultural soft power largely defines the development of a country and the laying of international status.With the increasingly rapid development in economic globalization and China's overall national strength,the “Going Global” strategy of Chinese culture has risen to a national strategy.Cross-cultural communication activities promote the development of human society,in which translation activity plays the most important role.However,the exchange and development of culture in human society must rely on translators by means of translation activity.Moreover,the image-shaping of the country and its people and the dissemination of its culture are closely related to the quality of translation.Therefore,the English versions of the Chinese literary works serve as an important approach to spread Chinese culture and to enhance China's cultural soft power.The Chinese literary works contain a large number of Chinese culture-loaded words carrying the history and social culture of the Chinese nation.Therefore,the translation of the Chinese literary works is essential for Chinese culture to go global.However,cultural differences between different countries pose a challenge in translating the culture-loaded words,which has become the biggest obstacle to cross-cultural communication in the practice of translation.What kind of translation strategies and methods can deal with the culture-loaded words in the English versions of the Chinese literary works has become the focus of translators' attention and research.The translation activities are researched by the traditional theory of translation from the equivalence of language or functional equivalence of the linguistic level.The translators have different opinions on whether we should focus more on the original form or the original content,get close to the source language(hereinafter referred to as SL)or the target language(hereinafter referred to as TL)and adopt the strategy of domestication or the strategy of foreignization.Skopos theory breaks the shackles of equivalence theory and points out that the translation is a cross-cultural communicative activity with a clear aim,and it is the production of the target text(hereinafter referred to as TT)interacting with a variety of factors.Moreover,the translation activities require the consultation of the participants in the process of translation.The theory allows the same source text(hereinafter referred to as ST)to be translated into different versions based on different purposes and commissioners of the translation and it focuses on the study of the target-language readers and the commissioners of the translation.The top-ranking rule of Skopos theory is the Skopos rule,which states that “the end justifies the means”.Moreover,the core concept of Skopos theory is that the translating purpose of the TT should be based for a translator to decide the translation strategies and methods taken in the translation.Under the guidance of Skopos theory,with the aim of analyzing Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang's translating purpose and finding out their strategies and methods adopted to achieve the purpose of the translation by carrying out detailed case study,the author of the thesis selects the translation of culture-loaded words in the English version of The True Story of Ah Q(hereinafter referred to as TSAQ)by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang(hereinafter referred to as Mr and Mrs Yang)as the research object and uses research methods of qualitative and statistical case analysis.By analyzing the translation strategies and methods of culture-loaded words in the English version of TSAQ by Mr and Mrs Yang,it can be found that the purpose of the translation is to help the target-language readers easily understand the ST of Lu Xun's novel,stimulate the target-language readers' interest in Chinese literature and spread Chinese culture efficiently,thus building a bridge for the exchanging of Chinese and Western culture so as to achieve exchanges between different cultural groups.Under the Skopos Rule,the two translators mainly adopt domestication as the main translation strategy centered by the target-language readers and translation methods complying with domestication like paraphrases,substitutions,imitations and other methods,supplemented by minority foreignization and translation methods complying with foreignization,like transliterations,transliterations plus text annotation and literal translations and others,taking full account of the target-language readers' cultural background and cognitive ability by using the idiomatic expression of the TL to convey the connotation of Chinese culture in the English version.In translating the culture-loaded words in the Chinese literary works,a translator should take full account of the language context of the TL and the acceptability of the target-language readers,making the translation present the main idea and implication of the ST while catering to the aesthetic taste of the target-language readers.Focusing more on domestication as the main translation strategy,supplemented by minority foreignization can enhance the readability of the translation to achieve the goal of cultural exchange.