On The Translation Strategies Of Culture-loaded Words From The Perspective Of Memetics

This is the report on the Chinese-English translation of the Introduction to Tianshui City ofA dministrative Division Handbook of the People’s Republic of China.The source text features a good many culture-loaded words with profound cultural connotations which are the emphases and difficulties of translation practice.Meanwhile,the available translation of culture-loaded words in cultural publicity texts such as the introduction of tourist attractions and the like is of poor quality.In view of the two situations,this translation report focuses on the translation strategies of culture-loaded words.Memetics is the guiding theory of this report,which provides a new,overall,and broader perspective for studies on the translation of culture-loaded words.Under the guidance of memetics,foreignization was chosen as the main translating strategy so as to ensure the fidelity and novelty of culture-loaded words.In different cases,foreignization was embodied with different translation methods,such as transliteration(transliteration+amplification,transliteration+annotation),literal translation.However,it is impossible to translate all the culture-loaded words with foreignization because the strategy may hinder the understanding of target readers.Therefore,translation strategies like domestication(free translation,simplification+omission),and back-translation were also used.The report is composed of five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction of the translation task,including the description of the project,the significance and the organization of the report.The second chapter introduces the preparation work that covers the analysis of text type,difficulties of translating culture-loaded words in the source text,as well as the introduction of the aids of translation.The third chapter presents the guiding theory of memetics,including the origin and main ideas of memetics,translation memetics,and the feasibility of using memetics to guide the translation of culture-loaded words.The fourth chapter is the main body of the report which includes the definition and classification of culture-loaded words,strategies for translating these words,and case analysis.The fifth chapter is the conclusion of this report.At present,the translation of culture-loaded words is mainly under the guidance of the Functional Equivalence Theory,the Skopos Theory,the Eco-translatology,and the Relevance Theory and so on.This report is aimed at exploring the translation strategies of these words from a new perspective and providing references for other translations that are similar to this kind.