The Translation Of Culturally-Loaded Words In External Publicity Texts

Nowadays,an increasing amount of publicity texts about Chinese culture are translated into English,and translators are faced with a big challenge in terms of how to render the culturally-loaded words in such texts.Based on her personal experience as one of the translators of a Chinese biography,The Ninth Panchen Lama,the author conducts a case study on the translation of culturally-loaded words.This thesis deals with the difficulties in translating culturally-loaded words.Firstly,it is the influence of cultural default,which is defined as the absence of some cultural background information on culturally-loaded words;secondly,some culturally-loaded words are unique to the Tibetan language and culture,and they do not exist in the western culture;thirdly,plenty of Chinese honorific words generally have no equivalent concepts or expressions in the target language.Samples of translation are taken from the discussed project and analyzed in detail to postulate what the author believes are feasible translation strategies for culturally-loaded words.It is concluded that for cultural default,translators may or should add cultural background information when such information is implied in the original Chinese text,or they can explicate the implied information in the source text;for Tibetan culturally-loaded words,translators may adopt the translation strategies of transliterating,explaining with clarity,and omitting if necessary;as for Chinese honorific words,translators may choose to clearly express the courtesy and modesty implied in the words or not to.