The Acceptability Of The Publicity-oriented Translation Of Chinese Culture-loaded Terms To English Natives

In recent years,with the enhancement of Chinese international status and national cultural soft power,more and more people around the world are eager to know and learn Chinese culture.As the basic unit of culture,successful translation of culture-loaded terms is strikingly important to achieve the purpose of intercultural communication.In addition,translation acceptability to target language readers is one of the influential factors of translation quality.However,in Chinese publicity-oriented materials,research is comparatively insufficient on the translation acceptability of Chinese culture-loaded terms,which is limited to quantitative studies and arguable weaknesses exist in research methodology.In order to fill up the research gap,this study centers on the acceptability of English translation of Chinese culture-loaded terms in The Periodical of Confucius Institute to English natives,with mainly qualitative study supplemented by quantitative study.The following are the three research questions:1)What is the general acceptability of English translation of Chinese culture-loaded terms to English natives?2)To English natives,What is the acceptability of English translation of Chinese culture-loaded terms in different frequency and different classifications?3)How are English natives' perceptions on the English translation of Chinese culture-loaded terms reflected in their oral discourse from TAPs experiment?According to the research questions,research data are analyzed from the following aspects.Firstly,given that there is no clear definition of culture-loaded terms,the author defines it as the non-equivalent words with cultural denotations and connotations,inherited by people having different living conditions,geographical environments,religious beliefs,social systems and ways of thinking.According to this definition and characteristics,the author divides culture-loaded terms into 6classifications,namely,Ecological terms,Material terms,Social terms,Religious terms,Linguistic terms and History-related and literary allusion terms.Based on the definition and classification,17 English translation of Chinese culture-loaded terms were selected from four cultural columns in The Periodical of Confucius Institute,8of which are in high frequency and 9 are low-frequency terms.Secondly,7participants were recruited to participate in the interview and TAPs experiment,whichwere designed to perceive the acceptability to them.The whole experimental process was recorded,and the verbalization was transcribed intelligently and proofread manually.Based on the Polarity system,the number of terms with different acceptability was calculated.With regard to the terms with different frequency and classifications,the number of terms with different acceptability was counted as well.Under the guidance of Mood and Modality systems,the oral discourse of acceptable verbalization was further analyzed,intending to uncover the genuine acceptability to participants and their actual understanding towards those terms.The results of the study disclose that:1)In general,the 7 participants can accept and understand most of the terms tested,which indicates that,to some extent,Chinese culture has been gradually recognized by foreigners,and the publicity-oriented translation of Chinese culture to the West has generally achieved the goal of promoting communication and understanding across cultures;2)The 7 participants can largely accept and understand the high-frequency terms and most of the Material terms can be understood.It is also found that translation methods also lay impact on the acceptability of the translations.That is to say,both frequency and translation methods are influential factors to the translation acceptability of Chinese culture-loaded terms to English natives;3)The analysis of Mood and Modality systems reveals that most of the participants are uncertain about their propositions,and the terms can not be well understood and accepted by the participants.By perceiving the acceptability of the terms with different translation versions,it is found that free translation method,literal translation method with explanation and transliteration method with explanation are the effective translation methods to enhance the translation acceptability of Chinese culture-loaded terms.To some extent,participants can largely accept the denotative meaning of the terms and are in short of complete understanding towards the connotative meaning.The findings of the study identify that it is strikingly necessary to conduct research on the acceptability of translation to native speakers.Translators should raise their awareness of the significance and necessity of translation acceptability in the process of translating publicity-oriented materials.Then,when translating,it is noteworthy that translators adopt free translation method,literal translation method with explanation and transliteration method with explanation to translate Chineseculture-loaded terms and pay more attention to the translation of culture connotative meanings,so as to help English readers understand China in a more thorough way,thus achieving the purpose of intercultural communication.