A Descriptive English Translation Study On The Culture-specific Items In "Three Kingdoms"

Chinese literature should be attached to great importance in the cause of "traditional Chinese culture’s going out". Literary classics are the cornerstone while their translation quality is the key to this cause. At present,"Three Kingdoms", one of the four great classical novels in China is very popular both at home and abroad, but its English translation study is far not as fruitful as other literary classics such as "A Dream of Red Mansions". Especially, the systematic and in-depth translation study on the cultural items in this novel is far from enough.From the theoretical prospective of descriptive translation study, this paper selects two cover-to-cover English translations as the study object, namely,"Three Kingdoms " by American sinologist Luo Mushi (Moss Roberts) in the1990s and "Romance of Three Kingdoms" by British sinologist Deng Luo (C.H. Brewitt Taylor) in the1920s. This paper conducts an English translation study on the culture-specific items, such as military culture, folk culture and language culture displayed in this novel, and observes if there is loss, deformation, addition or expansion of these factors by different processing modes in the translations. It also makes statistical analysis on the two versions’ cultural translation principle, strategy and effect and figures out the reasons for different choices. On this basis, this paper puts forward some suggestions for the cultural translation aimed at "traditional Chinese culture’s going out", sets up relevant translation mode, so as to find a suitable and effective way for traditional Chinese culture’s cross-cultural communication in translation.This study is an empirical case study of translation criticism based on text analysis. Cultural studies can be a direction of translation studies, while the continued development of the translation studies still mainly depend on its ontology research, or internal study. Based on the qualitative and quantitative research of the details on the texts, this paper aims at refining and summing up more effective and appropriate cultural translation methods, and returns to the ontology research in the current trend of cultural study in translation study field. In addition, this study is also a descriptive cultural translation study in the narrow sense. As a language scholar, the author puts the research focuses on the translation of culture-specific items in the Chinese literary classics, hoping to contribute to the great goal of cross-cultural transmission of traditional Chinese fine culture in the down-to-earth way. The purposes of this study can be listed as follows:first, establish the classification system of culture-specific items in "Three Kingdoms" and identify the research priorities. Second, set up an objective, pluralistic and open system of translation criticism based on the theoretical prospective of descriptive translation study, and conduct a comparative translation study on the culture-specific items in "Three Kingdoms". Finally, on the basis of quantitative research, build a cultural translation mode designed to let traditional Chinese fine culture "go out".It is found that Luo Mushi’s pattern of cultural translation is a "panoramic reappearance" type, for the overwhelming majority of his translation strategy is "foreignization". His cultural translation principle is "to strive to achieve cultural facsimile with a careful combination of cultural adaptation". That is to say, Luo Mushi hopes to transmit traditional Chinese culture in "Three Kingdoms" panoramically, completely and thoroughly. For the content of the rather big cultural differences, he even takes the risk of the target language readers’"inadaptation" caused by the "invasion" of culture of source language, and determines to make the target language readers’ understanding of Chinese culture in the Chinese way, which has achieved good results.And Deng’s cultural translation model is referred as "trickling down style". His cultural translation principle is "to pursue cultural facsimile with a flexible combination of cultural adaptation". While telling the colorful stories of "Three Kingdoms", Deng also hopes to reproduce and pass on the "significant" oriental characteristics embodied in this novel. But for the content of the big differences between Chinese and western culture, he considers more about "adapting and catering to the target language readers’ acceptance" and he makes the translation more expressive and readable by a more concise, straightforward translation way. Compared with Luo, Deng’s choice of translation strategy is more flexible and diverse, but overall it is still inclined to "foreignization" style.The two complete English versions of "Three Kingdoms" embody the different interpretations of the Chinese culture from different translators at different times in history, which complement each other. However, it is found that their cultural translation quality is high, but not perfect, and there is lot of loss, deformation, addition or expansion of cultural information in the translations, which is bound to bring the target languages readers misunderstanding and confusion, and is not qualified to reproduce and spread Chinese culture connotation. As a result, we establish a cultural translation model,"panorama reappearance" type, aiming to let Chinese culture "go global". And we also illustrate the principle of cultural translation, the translator’s cultural identity, cultural attitude and ability, the initial and preliminary norms; give a detailed description of operating norms on different types of cultural items. At the same time, the implications of this research on translation teaching and translators’training are offered in this paper.The full text is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is an introduction. It mainly introduces the research background, research significance, research status, research methods, this paper’s innovation points and the thesis framework. The second chapter is about building multivariate and dynamic translation criticism mode. It mainly introduces the subject, the object and the frame of reference of the translation criticism; and conducts a general comparison and contrast of both English versions. It also discusses the feasibility of this translation criticism mode. The third chapter is the translation study of military culture in the novel. It mainly discusses the military technology, the hero and their cold weapons, like knife, sword, halberd and so on, and the representation of Sun Tzu’s art of war strategies in the story. It also analyzes the different translation strategies and the reasons behind them, the effect of cultural transmission in the two versions. The fourth chapter is a study of folk customs. It mainly includes a contrast analysis of the Chinese English differences in clothing, drinking alcohol, marriage, funeral and other folk culture. It studies "three-dimensional" cultural conversion modes, the two translators’different translation strategies and their reasons and effect. The fifth chapter is an idiom translation study. It includes a comparative analysis of Chinese English idioms; it studies typical examples of translations of idioms of describing characters, environment, and the story. It also evaluates the two translators’different translation strategies, the reasons and the effect of them. The sixth chapter is a conclusion. It mainly discusses the main findings and value of this study. It summarizes the two cultural translation modes, translation principles and translation effect based on a quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis. It also establishes a new mode, offering some suggestions for cultural translation standards, principles, strategies and methods. It illustrates the enlightenment on translation teaching and practice by this research. Finally, it lists some shortages of this study and puts forward some ideas for further research.