Translation Strategies For Culture-loaded Words In Biographical Text From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

With the rapid development of globalization,cross-cultural communications are becoming more and more frequent.In history,missionaries once played an important role in cross-cultural communication between China and the west,and therefore,the biographies which record their experiences in China have become an indispensable carrier in cross-cultural communication.Biographical literature,with both the characteristics and functions of literature and history,inevitably conveys profound information of culture in history,politics,society,education,and religion and so on and therefore,must contain numerous culture-loaded words.The translation of biographical text helps reflect historical culture and foreign culture.Therefore,to better translate biographical literature,the translator adopts the reception theory,as it is of great significance in guiding the translation.The differences between Chinese and English cultures and languages make it a big problem as to how to deal with culture-loaded words in literary works.Therefore,when dealing with culture-loaded words,the translator should,on the one hand,convey the special cultural connotation of culture-loaded words to the target language readers,and on the other,conform to the cultural context of the target language.This translation practice report is based on chapters 7 and 8 of The Wise Man from the West—Matteo Ricci and His Mission to China.This book,written by biographer Vincent Cronin,objectively narrates the life experience of the famous missionary Matteo Ricci in China during the Ming Dynasty from the third-person perspective.Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 mainly introduce Matteo Ricci's life in Nanjing and the setbacks he encountered when he went to Beijing.There are many culture-loaded words in these parts.Chapter One of this report makes a brief introduction of the translating material The Wise Man from the West—Matteo Ricci and His Mission to China and the translator's general translation process.Chapter Two combs the main theoretical background knowledge about reception theory,biographical text and culture-loaded words,etc.Chapter Three analyses five types of culture-loaded words in the translation materiel.Chapter Four is the body of thisreport and by means of about twenty cases,illustrates the five important strategies in translating various culture-loaded words in this biography based on reception theory,including verbal translation,back-translation,replacement,amplification and annotation.Chapter Five summarizes the findings and limitations of this translation report.Large quantity of translation practice has shown that it is of great importance to exactly interpret and translate the culture-loaded words in the source text for smoother cultural exchanges.On the one hand,it will help preserve the cultural characteristic of the source text and,on the other,it will make the final translation obtain the best balance between the loyalty to the source text and the loyalty to the target language readers.