《浮生六记》中文化负载词的翻译策略及内涵——以林语堂译本为例

论文总字数：36900字

摘 要

林语堂是中国现代著名作家、学者、翻译家、语言学家，在中国现代文学史上是一个极富争议的人物，他既经历了五四以来新旧文化、中西文化交融的冲击，也在民族文化走向世界的进程中作出了贡献。他精通中英文写作，翻译作品也备受好评，《浮生六记》便是其中之一。

《浮生六记》是清朝人沈复所作的自传体散文。记叙了作者和妻子之间前期的生活琐事和顺遂，后期生活的颠沛流离及最后的阴阳相隔，以及和友人间的快活轶事。《浮生六记》不仅包含了众多富有中国特色的文化负载词，也体现出社会变迁历史背景下人们思想的变化和梦想的破灭。

本文针对《浮生六记》中的文化负载词进行分类研究。本文通过举例说明的方式，分析了文化负载词的翻译策略和翻译方法并且总结了文化负载词翻译的倾向。同时，介绍相关文化负载词的文化内涵，发挥文化负载词在文化交流中的作用。

关键词：文化负载词；翻译策略；翻译方法；文化内涵；《浮生六记》；林语堂

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments i

English Abstract ii

Chinese Abstract iii

Table of Contents iv

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Background of the study 1

1.2 Significance of the study 2

1.3 Layout of the thesis 3

Chapter Two Literature Review 4

2.1 The research status of the translation of cultural-loaded words 4

2.2 Cultural-loaded words 4

2.2.1 Definition of the cultural-loaded words 4

2.2.2 Influential factors of the formation of cultural-loaded words 4

2.2.3 The translation method and strategy of the cultural-loaded words 6

2.3 Six Chapters of a Floating Life 9

2.4 Lin Yutang 9

Chapter Three Case Study 11

3.1 The classification of the cultural-loaded words 11

3.2 The translation of the substantial cultural-loaded words 11

3.3 The translation of the social cultural-loaded words 12

3.4 The translation of the cultural-loaded words about institution, custom and concept 14

3.5 Influential factors of the translation of cultural-loaded words 14

Chapter Four Conclusion 16

4.1 Summary 16

4.2 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Study 16

References 18

Appendix I. Comparison Sheet of Chinese Different Pinyin systems 19

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the study

The Chinese civilization is one of the oldest in the world which has a history of more than 5000 years. Chinese people are famous for their industry and wisdom. They created many wonderful literature works and made outstanding contributions to the development of world civilization. Under the background of globalization, different cultures and civilizations are developing and blending together more and more quickly by using literature translation as the bridge and link. Chinese people should not only learn and absorb the excellent culture and advanced science and technology of other countries but also make great effort to inherit and develop the splendid traditional culture of China in order to let the world know China deeply. Indeed, every wonderful civilization has the inner impulse to communicate and integrate with others. In other words, this inner impulse drives a civilization to show its charm and accept others’ with its culture self-consciousness. In fact, we have brought in so many great foreign works and it’s time for us to introduce our masterpieces to the world by translating Chinese works into English. It is good for spreading Chinese culture and promoting the cultural fusion with the west.

In practical activities, the translation quality of cultural-loaded words determines the acceptability of the literature works and the translation of cultural-loaded words has always been difficult. The reason is that they describe the unique cultural habits and customs in China while most of the foreign readers have no idea of these traditional things and never have chances to achieve personal experiences. If the translation of cultural-loaded words is not so successful, the foreign readers will be unable to have access to the culture connotation of Chinese literature works especially the classic ones. The readers may feel sorry and confused about many contents. In order to translate the cultural-loaded words well, the translator must be proficient in both Chinese and English language. What’s more, the translator should have a comprehensible understanding of both eastern and western culture. A translator can comprehend the spirit of the original work deeply, infer the author’s intention correctly and consider the readers’ thought and receptivity thoroughly only on the basis of mastering the two languages and cultures. He can absorb the essence of the original work and express the cultural factors included in the cultural-loaded words properly only in this way too.

Moreover, the aim of literature translation is to spread culture. And the diffusion of culture should be result-oriented. The effectiveness of culture transmission depends on the communication subject, content, method and object. In activities of the interaction between translation and culture dissemination, the purpose, subject and strategy of translation will impact on cross-cultural communication. Different translation methods will result in different communicating effects.

As a great literature work, Six Chapters of a Floating Life plays an important role in spreading Chinese culture to foreign countries. It includes many cultural-loaded words which have high literary value and provides many translation examples. Its English version is one of Lin Yutang’s most successful works. Lin Yutang estimated the readers’ ability of accepting different culture and used flexible means of translation to not only keep the original cultural information but also enhance the readability.

This paper aims at analyzing Lin Yutang’s translation method and strategy of cultural-loaded words to provide reference to the translation of the similar words and make it more possible for the readers to know Chinese culture through these words.

1.2 Significance of the study

The researches that focus on Lin Yutang or the Chinese version are of many. However, there are few making efforts to classify the cultural-loaded words and researching the translation strategy or connotation.

This paper will analyze Lin Yutang’s translation of the cultural-loaded words. Firstly, it can make reference to the translation of similar words. Secondly, readers can have access to the importance of these words and be more able to know about Chinese tradition. Thirdly, Six Chapters of a Floating Life was finished in Qing Dynasty which can represent the cultural and social background of that time. It is also readable.

1.3 Layout of the thesis

This essay includes four chapters.

The first chapter is the introduction. It covers the relationship between cultural diffusion and literature translation, especially the translation of cultural-loaded words. It also involves the significance of this essay.

The second chapter is the literature review. It explains three subjects associated with the theme, including the introduction of cultural-loaded words, of Six Chapters of a Floating Life and of the translator Lin Yutang.

The third chapter is case study which shows the translation strategy and method of cultural-loaded words specifically in the Six Chapters of a Floating Life.

The fourth chapter is the conclusion which summarizes this essay and recognizes the limitations.

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 The research status of the translation of cultural-loaded words

Cultural-loaded words have many other names, for example, "culture-bound terms", "culture color words", "culture-specific expressions", "culturally-loaded words". But no matter how they are termed, actually they refer to the same kind of words. Here, for the convenience of discussion, the thesis just adopts the name cultural-loaded words and they are shortened as CLW.

The researches of cultural-loaded words are from two main aspects. One is about the translation theory, strategy, method and technique of cultural-loaded words. The other is about the factors which affect the translation of these words, such as the readability of the translated version, the cultural differences and the translators’ subjective intention.

2.2 Cultural-loaded words

2.2.1 Definition of the cultural-loaded words

Cultural-loaded words refer to the words, phrases and idioms remarking the unique things in a particular culture (Huang Jianfeng, 2010: 109). These words show some unique activities belonging to some nations which differ from others in their long historical process of development.

2.2.2 Influential factors of the formation of cultural-loaded words

1. Outlook and Values

Outlook includes people’s attitudes towards universe, nature and their relationship with nature. Moreover, outlook is closely related to values and plays the main role in controlling people’s way of thinking. Therefore, outlook has effects on every part of people’s perception. As a result, it affects human’s belief, concept and behavior. Because of having different outlook, people who come from Chinese or English cultural background have different ideas of the same objective things. Chinese culture advocates the concept that man and nature form a unity. All things in the world have some relationship with others and they cannot be separated. However, English culture believes that every single part in the world is relatively independent, equal and concurrent. In other words, Chinese highlights coherence while English emphasizes independence. This is also the biggest bifurcation point of outlook of these two cultures.

Consequently, when we translate Chinese cultural-loaded words into English, it is hard for us to find exact equivalent word directly. Usually, we use many modifiers to express the cultural connotation of the original words.

2. Religion and History

English-speaking countries have been affected by the culture of Ancient Greek, Roman and Christianity. Many English cultural-loaded words originated from these cultures. However, Chinese tradition has close relationship with Buddhism and Taoism. The reason why the translation of cultural-loaded words is difficult is that the words originating from religion have no counterparts in a different culture.

Furthermore, China and English countries have total different historical background. China has a history of more than 5000 years. Chinese feudal culture was formed under the control of imperial power for about 3000 years. Differently, England as a country of rather long history in western world established its feudalism in the seventh century and developed its capitalism after 1640. Since the two countries were in different stages of development at that time, the cultural-loaded words tended to focus in different area. For example, China was suffering from a long history of the backwardness of social production. Agriculture played the most important role in economy. As a result, many cultural-loaded words are about the agriculture instruments or ways of labor. To the contrary, England had a great development after the industrial revolution. The English mode of production is opposite to that of the Chinese. So the cultural-loaded words related to production are not the same in Chinese and English culture.

3. Ideology

Chinese and English have big differences in political idea, values, ethical thought and moral rules. The reason why these differences are important in the translation of cultural-loaded words is that they affect people’s attitudes towards the same or similar things. A translator must judge whether the word has a positive or a negative connotation. This translation of culture is better than the mere translation of literal meaning.

4. Natural Environment

Different natural environment will produce different speciation and products. These different objective conditions will make people have different feelings of the same natural phenomenon. Especially, China has many cultural-loaded words involving natural things. To translate this kind of words perfectly, the translator who has the experiences of living in both the two areas or reading some contents about different natural environment is preferred.

5. Custom

The different customs have effects on the translation of cultural-loaded words mainly in one aspect. The one is the kinship terminology. Chinese has more kinship addressing terms than those in English. In China, these terms show the strict distinction in kinship. These Chinese terms should not only tell the branch of the relatives but also tell the gender and seniority. All these rules came from the background of feudal regime which asked for the attention of blood relationship, class difference, respect for seniority and priority in rank. However in English countries, there are not so many kinship terms. That’s because the sense of interpersonal equality is advocated in western culture.

In a word, if the Chinese kinship term shows important social or cultural information, the translator should express it further in English, if not, a common English kinship term will be enough.

2.2.3 The translation method and strategy of the cultural-loaded words

In translation studies, the academia does not pay enough attention to distinguish concepts. Particularly, translation strategy, method and technology are these three concepts which usually mix with each other. This conceptual confusion hinders the development of translation researches. And in this essay, I will focus on the translation strategy and method of cultural-loaded words.

Strategy refers to specific principles and methods of doing things. It stands for the group of ways which can be used to solve problems (Xiong Bing, 2014: 82-88). Therefore, while strategy is associated with method, it highlights the macro principles and basic solutions. The definition of strategy also shows this characteristic--a plan or policy designed for a particular purpose.

Method refers to the way or program which is used to solve the problem of thought, talking and action, etc.. It means a way, step or measure taken to achieve a particular purpose. Its definition tells the similar meaning as well-- a particular way of doing something. However, the choice of method is not freewill and it should be under the guidance of some correct plan or principle beforehand. Here I can conclude that method belongs to a category under the domain of strategy.

On the basis of understanding the method above, translation method can be defined as the way, step or measure taken under the instruction of translation strategy to reach some specific translation purposes.

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