A Study Of Culture-loaded Terms Translation In The English Version Of Romance Of The Western Bower From The Perspective Of Memetics

As Chinese ancient drama is a gem of Chinese classical literature, Romance of the Western Bower written by Wang Shihfu in which lots of cultural connotations abound in its exquisite language that stands out in Chinese drama, exerting a great impact on the the history of Chinese drama and even history of Chinese literature.With the painstaking work of writers and translators at home and abroad, Romance is gradually favored by overseas readers. Apart from the versions of Hsiung and West and Idema, Xu Yuanchong's translated version in lyric style is renowned both at home and abroad. Based on the premise of loyalty, Xu exploits his versed language skills to reproduce beautiful lyrics and rhymes of the original text, presenting its artistic charm and research value in the world stage.So far lots of scholars conduct researches on Xu Yuanchong's translated version of Romance of the Western Bower, in which an outbalanced tendency is making an analysis on his translation from the translator' subjectivity, the readers' acceptation,translation equivalence, Skopos theory and aesthetic theory and etc. Nevertheless, few scholars interpret the translated text with a profusion of cultural images and connotations from a cultural perspective. In view of present researches, this thesis attempts to combine two powerful devices for illustrating culture, memetics and cultural equivalence, to analyze Xu Yuanchong's translation on culture-loaded terms as strong memes, evaluating the transmission of successful memes in cultural mold and their extent of memes transmission.Based on obvious researches on memetics and cultural equivalence, three questions are intended to deal with in this thesis:1. How is cultural equivalence theory represented in the extent of memes transmission in culture-loaded terms of Romance of the Western Bower?2. How are Chesterman's expectancy norms represented in professional norms that the translator has to conform to in the process of translation?3. How are Chesterman's translation norms represented in Xu Yuanchong's translation strategies adopted in the process of translating of culture-loaded terms?Through a detailed analysis, this study draws the conclusion:Firstly, memetics, as a theory of cultural evolution, offers a strong explanatorypower on the study of cross-cultural translation on culture-loaded terms. Translation plays a prominent role in the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic transmission of memes in culture-loaded terms from source text to target text as well as their degree of transmission. Chinese culture-loaded terms are strong memes in the meme pool of Chinese specific cultural and historical background, which are not compatible with the linguistic or cultural systems of target readership. In light of the criteria of strong memes and the four stages of memes transmission, translators are supposed to highlight the cultural fitness to target text in translating cultural terms when decoding and encoding the memes from the original text to another. So the memes in Chinese specific cultural terms can survive and compete for limited resources of target readers to the greatest extent to be transmitted to overseas readers.Secondly, translation norms instructs the translator in translation practice. On the one hand, under the guidance of Chesterman's expectancy norms, the translator is supposed to take a comprehensive consideration of certain factors--the translation tradition of target language, the text type and ideology and etc--to fix his translation orientation towards the source language or the target language. On the other hand,professional norms go throughout the whole process of translation. Under the guidance of professional norms, the translator should flexibly adopt translation strategies to transfer the greatest extent of memes in cross-cultural translation.Thirdly, cultural equivalence is a kind of evaluative criteria on the quality of translation. Obviously, it is impossible to reach entire equivalence from the source text to the target text for the sake of the arbitrariness of language and cultural differences. Translating the culture-loaded terms is also the case that only in the way of seeking optimal equivalence at the semiotic, pragmatic and semantic levels can the translation obtain the optimal cultural equivalence.This thesis confirms that memetics is feasible to apply to translation theory and practice on literature works of Chinese specific culture, and attempts to provide the criteria of cultural equivalence essentially, on which the translator achieves the goal of meme transmission utmost by preserving and justifying. So it promotes the spreading of Chinese culture to overseas, showing the unique charm of Chinese culture.