The Translation Of Culture-Loaded Words In English And Russian Versions Of Border Town

Shen Congwen is a representative of Chinese local literature,whose works were translated into more than ten languages,including English,French,German,Russian,Japanese,Norwegian and Swedish,which is a clear proof of the charm of those works for foreign readers.Among all those works,there's no doubt that Border Town,which takes Shen Congwen's hometown as a prototype,has a special place.Border Town uses an idyllic style of writing to describe the local customs and practices and natural scenery.Those culture-loaded words of distinct local characteristics make the novel more enchanting,but at the same time also make the translation of this novel more challenging,and raise the bar for the choice of translation method.This thesis focuses on the translation strategy of culture-loaded words in the Border Town,and sorts out different scholars' ideas on culture-loaded words,including Newmark,Mona Baker and Liao Qiyi,and also borrowed Naida's way of classifying culture-loaded words.The research uses the English translation of Jeffrey Kinkley in 2009 for it is the latest version.There is only one choice for the Russian translation-the one done by Somkina in 2012.With the help of concrete examples,the research compared the different methods of translating the same culture-loaded word in the English and the Russian version,tried to analyze their advantages and disadvantages in terms of the expression of the initial meaning and the reading experience,and tried to find out the cause of such difference.The conclusion of this research is that due to the weak position of Chinese culture during the modern history,there is a large gap between Chinese culture and western culture.Therefore,the narrowing of this gap requires the constant hard work of translators of Chinese literature.