《活着》中文化负载词句的翻译[范文]

 摘要：余华是我国当代作家中的一个杰出代表，他的作品被翻译成多国文字在不同国家出版发行，受到了学术界的广泛赞誉。其中，由著名汉学家白睿文所译的《活着》更是成为多国翻译作品里面的畅销书。

本论文以《活着》的英译本为例，从归化异化的视角具体分析了文中文化负载词句的翻译。这些文化负载词句在漫长的历史长河中形成，是语言系统中最能体现语言承载的文化信息的部分，它们直接反映了人类社会的生活。考虑到文化负载词句的显著意义，同时，到目前为止对《活着》中文化负载词语翻译的研究并不多见，因此，有必要对这该小说中文化负载词句的翻译进行研究。

本研究的分析表明：白睿文在这类词汇的翻译中，并没有单一使用归化或异化方法，而是采用了以异化为主、归化为辅的翻译策略，既保证了文章的可读性和可接受性，又向目的语读者传达了中国文化的内涵。换句话说，使用这样一种策略，白睿文基本保留了源语文本的文体风格，忠实再现了原文，为传播中国文化做出了巨大贡献。

余华作品-活着

本研究期待对于《活着》中文化负载词句翻译的未来的研究起到一些抛砖引玉的作用，并希望未来有更多的人能够关注《活着》的英译本，从中学到有效的翻译策略。

​

ChapterOne Introduction

This chapter is an introduction of the whole thesis. Firstly, research background is presented. Then the author will illustrate the significance and objectives of this study. In the end, the organization of this study will be introduced.  

1.1 Research Background

Translation, to a certain degree, could be one of the most enduring activities in human history. Due to it, numerous outstanding literary works have spread into the whole world, which has greatly promoted cultural communication and exchange among different countries.

Needless to say, it is not that easy to translate one literary work, because translation is not just a simple mechanical transfer from one language into another. Instead, countless factors must be considered during the translating process. Cultural factor is one of them. A qualified translator not only needs to be bilingual, but also bicultural. Translation is also a continuous choice-making process. A translator would “make continuous comparisons between the two cultures because translation equivalence in its very sense should be matched in meanings, functions, scopes and feelings in the two cultures” (Wang, 1984: 2).

As important carriers and media of a culture, culture-specific expressions, undoubtedly, are of great importance to be dealt with. Due to discrepancies in various respects (such as environment, religion, history…) between two languages, differences exist in the two languages. Therefore, it is very hard to find a counterpart in another language to express the exact meaning of the original one. In translation, there may be two possibilities: the translator may try to preserve the exotic flavor of the original context but sometimes end up confusing the target readers, or he may put more emphasis on catering to the target readers but sometimes fail to present the implied meaning of the source-language culture. Obviously, neither of the possibilities is desirable for cultural exchange. Therefore, how to handle culture-specific expressions is worthy of our attention.

Domestication and foreignization are commonly regarded as effective strategies to tackle the translation of culture-related expressions. The two terms were first put forward by the famous American translation theorist Lawrence Venuti in 1995 in his bookThe Translator’s Invisibility(Zhang, 2006: 43). Since then, heated debates over the advantages of the two strategies have never ended. In fact, translators can flexibly combine the two in their translations, and indeed some translators already did that. Michael Berry’s translation ofTo Live is just a good example that combines the two strategies of both domestication and foreignization together.

Some studies on Michael Berry’s translation ofTo Live have been found. For example, Wang (2012), Dong (2015), Hou (2012) analyzed Berry’s translation from the perspective of the Translation Variation Theory, the Adaptation Theory, and the Eco-translatological Theory respectively. These studies illustrated some words, sentences or dialogues in Berry’s translation with these strategies and explained why Berry used those strategies. However, up to now, few studies, if any, have been found to analyze the translation of culture-specific expressions inTo Livebased on domestication and foreignization.