Chapter One Introduction
In the long development course of cultural communication, the angles of research of translation have changed many times. Translation is regarded to an activity of cultural exchange. Culture-loaded words reflect the culture of a nation, and translators have put eyes on the translation of these words. However, the translation of them is not satisfactory. This is because of the influence of cultural elements. In fact, culture affects all aspects of culture-loaded words. If translators don’t know the background of culture, and they are not easy to comprehend culture-loaded words, let alone, exactly translate them. Therefore, researching the translation of culture-loaded words from the perspective of culture not only helps to grasp the meaning and use of culture-loaded words, but also helps translators to convey the information of language and culture of the original. The studies of culture-loaded words make for human communication.
E.A Nida thinks that most translation errors result from misunderstanding to the source text. Both words and culture have close relationship in all linguistic factors. Words are not only the smallest language unit, but also the first obstacle at the time of translating text. Culture-loaded words are an important part. They are words carrying cultural information, including special cultural phenomenons, idioms, allusions. As a result, learning and understanding of culture-loaded words are wise to understand the Chinese culture. The translation of culture-loaded words is a very complicated problem, so translators should deeply understand our native culture. At the same time, in-depth understanding of foreign culture can exactly comprehend the connotation of the original.
Three main questions need answering in the following description: first, if cultural equivalence can be achieved in translation. Second, what extent of cultural equivalence are able to be established. Third, how to realize cultural equivalence. Because this paper mainly introduces translation of culture-loaded words under cultural equivalence. The first question and the second question are important. After equivalence theory is described, this paper mainly introduces these scholars: Yan Fu, Nida and Newmark. Then culture-loaded words are classified from the semantic point of view in the paper and make comprehensive and systematic analysis to culture-loaded words.
Although translation theorists in different countries in the world have made so many elaborations and analysis about equivalence translation from many different aspects, the studies of cultural equivalence are still at an early stage in China. What’s more, though some scholars have raised cultural equivalence in translation, their theories and studies are too broad. So two questions must be solved in this paper: text cultural equivalence and words cultural equivalence.
With the development of cultural communication, the studies of culture-loaded words under cultural equivalence are help for not only spread rich and profound Chinese culture to foreign countries, but also for Chinese to study good and advanced factors in foreign culture. What’s more, in the present society of global integration, we translate the original only from a cultural perspective and the target text fully embody the cultural information of the original, then we will create a good translation work. This point not only applies to the translation of culture-loaded words, but also applies to the translation of any culture-related texts.
Chapter Two Cultural Equivalence
2.1 Research Perspective of Culture-loaded Words
In the long development course of translation theories, the translation of culture-loaded words is researched by investigators from many different theories’ perspectives. For example, there are functional equivalence theory, relevance theory, adaption theory, memetics, eco-translatology, cognitive schema theory and so on. Liu Jing discusses how to find out the best link between the original text and context when these words about national culture are translated, so as to convey exactly information intention and communication intention of the source text to target readers.(刘静, 2007) In the view of eco-translatology, Guo Xuming thinks it is necessary to improve the ecological environment of the translation of culture-loaded words and optimize translation strategies so as to facilitate the transmission of cultural connotation of culture-loaded words in the English context.(郭旭明, 2011) Wang Xiaohui discusses English the translation of culture-loaded words under “cultural schema theory”.(王晓辉, 2012) Finally, he reaches a conclusion that there is “cultural schema” relationship between writers and readers, that is, cultural schemata fit, parallel, vacancy and marginalization. Translators should adopt corresponding strategies to translate these words under four cases, in order to help readers to fill in cultural schema’s vacancy, correct cultural schema’s differences, and then rebuild cultural schema. Nevertheless, we will discuss the translation of culture-loaded words under culture equivalence in the paper.
2.2 Equivalence Theory
In recent year, when equivalence theory is mentioned, then there are three theories are often mentioned. That is, Fu’s “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”, Nida’s “functional equivalence” and Newmark’s “communicative translation”.
In 1898, Yan Fu first put forward “Translation has to do three difficult things: to be faithful, expressive and elegant”.(严复, 1898 ) It is generally thought that “faithfulness” is the most important principle. “Faithfulness” contains “expressiveness” and “elegance”. Yan Fu’s “faithfulness” means that a good translation work is faithful to the original version. In his view, translators don’t have to strictly translate the original in accordance with the order of sentence, and can adjust appropriately order, but the original and translation have to keep consistent in the connotation.
All in all, we see that Yan Fu pursues the “faithfulness” in form and meaning. He also focuses on “expressiveness”. In the introduction, he wrote:
“Translation has to do three difficult things: to be faithful, expressive and elegant. It is difficult enough to be faithful to the original and yet if a translation is not expressive, it is tantamount to having no translation.Hence expressiveness should be required too.”(严复,1898)
Yan Fu emphasizes that translating the original into target language bases on good comprehension. In addition, Yan Fu also pursues “elegance”. “Elegance” not only represents fancy words, but also emphasizes the improvement of the level of translation on the basis on “faithfulness” and “expressiveness”.
Although “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” is not perfect, Yan Fu is regarded as a pioneer in the field of translation from the angles of historical development. Because he makes an important contribution to the development of Chinese translation theories and practices. His theory is still active in lots of Chinese translation works. Whether Fu Lei’s “spiritual resemblance”, Qian Zhongshu’s “transformation” or Liu Chongde’s “faithfulness, expressiveness and closeness”, all are a complement and development of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance” of Yan Fu.
E.A.Nida is a well-known translator and translation theorist in the united states. Many of his theories had a profound effect on the development of western translation theories from 1960s to 1980s. “Functional equivalence” is one of widely used theories in a lot of translation theories. Nida said:
“translation is an act of communication, and judging whether the translation is correct or not can’t just concern the lexical meaning, grammatical structure and rhetorical devices, what’s more, translation can be comprehended fully by readers.”(Nida, 2007)
想知道重复率是多少？点击“知网论文查重入口”直连中国知网查重检测系统
