| The heroic epic King Gesar is a great work that reflects the history of ancient Tibetan society in an encyclopedia-like fashion.It depicts the life of the ethnic hero King Gesar,who vanquished demons,promoted good deeds,and brought benefits to the people.The epic is extensive and profound,consisting of over 300 volumes and more than 1 million lines of verses.Its Chinese translation alone contains over 20 million characters.Five times longer than the Mahabharata and fifty times longer than the Iliad,King Gesar is regarded as the world’s longest heroic epic and is also known as the "Iliad of the East".Over the centuries,it has been translated into many languages,mostly by Western translators.Drawing on the 11 translation strategies for culture-loaded words proposed by Spanish translation scholar Aixelá and Eugene Nida’s classification method for such words,the thesis uses the research methods of descriptive study and of case study to conduct a comparative analysis of 207 culture-loaded words selected from three translations of the epic.The study summarizes the translation strategies of culture-loaded words in the three English translations of the epic:King Gesar by Wang Guozhen,The Epic of Gesar of Ling by Robin Kornman,and The Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling by Alexandra David-Neel.The author also proposes suggestions for translating culture-loaded words in classic literature.The study found that the three translators used different translation strategies.Robin Kornman used transliteration(20 times),transliteration with intratextual gloss(21 times),orthographic adaptation(15 times),linguistic(non-cultural)translation(9 times),and limited universalization(5 times).David-Neel used linguistic(non-cultural)translation(15 times),transliteration(13 times),transliteration with extratextual gloss(12 times),and transliteration with intratextual gloss(10 times).Wang Guozhen used linguistic(non-cultural)translation(25 times),transliteration(20 times),absolute universalization(8 times),naturalization(6 times),and limited universalization(5 times).The most frequently used strategies for Robin were transliteration and transliteration with intratextual gloss,for David Neel they were transliteration and transliteration with extratextual gloss,and for Wang Guozhen they were linguistic(non-cultural)translation and transliteration.One common characteristic of the three translators was that they all used transliteration and intratextual gloss.The transliteration is conducive to retaining the linguistic and cultural features;meanwhile,the extratextual gloss will help readers with further reading without affecting their reading experience.In terms of the main reasons for different strategies by three translators,the author finds that their cognitive differences of people’s religious belief,outlook on life,value system,language habits,and cultural diversity made their adopted strategies totally different. |
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