A Process-oriented Empirical Research On English Majors' Translation Strategies Of Culture-specific Items

This thesis is devoted to the descriptive and process-oriented study of English majors'translation of culture-specific items (CSI).It is generally acknowledged that translation is not only a cross-language activity but also a cross-cultural activity. With a brief overview, we find that the prosperity of certain inter-disciplines and the trend of cultural turn have been promoting translation study undergoing a considerable shift to a more descriptive and comprehensive position. However, the studies of translating CSI mainly focus on the production instead of the process; whereas in the process studies, the factors such as the translators'strategies, performances, etc., during translating are usually discussed without concerning the cultural factors. This thesis intends to discuss these issues, that is, the translator's translation strategies of translating CSI from the perspective of process instead of product. The subjects are English majors so that some characteristics of selecting translation strategies of this particular group could be revealed.An immediate retrospections (IRs) study is carried out to explore the translation process of the translators when dealing with CSI. The small-scale investigation involves an experiment to elicit IRs from participants from higher grades, who verbalize their translation process immediately after the completion of translation task. The protocols are then coded and analyzed after the experiment. According to the analysis of the result of the investigation, cultural knowledge plays a significant role in the process of translating CSI and the translators employ various types of translation strategies in the process,with preference of applying literal translation and paraphrase. Data analyses indicate that the translators show difference between different translation directions, and the excellent ones and inferior ones have difference in the numbers of translation strategies and the sequence of mental process. A discussion on general translation principle's influence on the selection of translation strategies of CSI is also conducted.In the light of present research, some suggestions are proposed for future studies in the last part of the thesis.