Translation As A Cultural Bridge

Cultures are cumulative treasures created by human beings. Cultural communication appears at the same time with cultures and would not stay alone without translation. Intercultural communication is the source of translation while translation is a product of it.Chinese culture is time-honored, everlasting with infinite vitality, which attributes to translating activities. Historically, Chinese culture has gained great benefits from the four upsurges of translating activities to make a rapid development in various fields. In the meantime, the introduction of Chinese cultural treasures to the world, without doubts, relies on translation. This thesis takes the most influential Confucian classics - The Four Books and The Five Classics - as examples to illustrate the functions of translation in introducing Chinese culture to the world, and the far-reaching influences that Chinese culture have thrown upon world culture, Western thoughts, world literature and itself as well.Gu Hongming and Xu Mengxiong have been established as examples in this thesis to show Chinese translators' outstanding abilities in C-E translation. In addition, the achievements of C-E translating activities add weight to the advantageous factors that Chinese translators possess to introduce Chinese culture. All these have given full support to one fact that Chinese scholars have great abilities in doing C-E translation well to introduce Chinese culture to the world.Any culture, when introducing itself, always seeks aids from translation - a culture bridge to the world. Many possible ways to translate cultures well are suggested for this purpose, such as to select appropriate subjects for attracting foreign readership, to improve skills of translation, to emphasize dynamic development of translation theories and linguistic, socio-linguistic theories. With these efforts, one culture would constantly revitalize and develop itself, avoiding decaying and withering away in the global cultural ferment.Nowadays "Globalization" is something inevitable. For this reason, in order to retain the uniqueness of Chinese culture and resist Western "Cultural Hegemony", it is much more significant to introduce Chinese culture to the world across the bridge of C-E translation.