Analysis of Cultural Translation on Lao She's Teahouse

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I. Introduction Of Cultural Translation

It is universally accepted that translation is about the meeting of at least two cultures, as Franco Aixelia(1996:52) mentioned “translation mixes two or more cultures”. Obviously, whenever we are doing translation, we cannot avoid the cultural features that appear in the source text. Therefore, to some extent culture is seen as a “problem” in translation. However, I think it should be turned into a way for translators to understand the source text and it should also enlighten them to come up with a better solution to solve the cultural “problems” in the process of translation.

As skopos theory (Reiss and Vermmer:1984) suggests, the translator is the key player in the process of intercultural communication and production of the translation because of the purpose of translation. In this case, “cultural awareness” of both languages is important, with which the translators can identify the specific cultural terms and concepts in the presence of the source text, and try to produce the most effective target text which echoes the original as much as possible. To arouse their “culture awareness”, translators should pay attention to the “cultural word”(Peter Newmark: 1988). According to Peter Newmark, there are some categories of cultural words:
1)Ecology: flora, fauna, hills, rivers;
2)Material culture: food, clothes, houses and towns, transport
3)Social culture: work and leisure
4)Organizations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts: political and administrative, systems, religion, art
5)Gestures and habits

Since “words do not mean in isolation; words mean as indispensable parts of a contextual whole that includes the emotional tone and impact, the literary antecedents,...

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...04). Lao She’s Bitter Humour and Historical Re-Visioning in Teahouse
[8] Munday, Jeremy (2010). Introducing Translation Studies.London: Routledge
[9] Newmark, Peter (1988). A Text Book of Translation. Prentice-Hall International
[10] Reiss , K. and H. Vermeer (1984). Groundwork for a General Theory of Translation. Tubingen: Niemeyer.
[11] Teahouse(Chinese-English Bilingual Edition), Chinese text by Lao She, Translated by John Howard-Gibbon. 2010. Traditional Chinese-English Bilingual Edition. The Chinese University Press
[12] introduction of John Howard-Gibbon, retrieved from: http://authors.simonandschuster.co.uk/John-Howard-Gibbon/47362375#sthash.HttsguNc.dpuf [13] The definition of “idiom”, online Collins English Dictionary, retrieved from: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/
[14] Dr. Cynthia Tsui, Cultural Translation, Cultural Transfer, The Turn(Power point).

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