Translation Of American Proverbs Viewed From The Perspective Of Culture

Culture is the general process and achievements of evolution which usually comprises all the material and spiritual wealth created by human society in his historical practice. Language is not only the core of culture, but also the basic survival status and ultimate need of human. The history of human can be seen as the process of individual's striving for his right to speak from the microscopic perspective and the process of language's realizing its rule over the universe from the macroscopic one. Most proverbs, simple in form and beautiful in sound effect, express both truth and kindness in an interesting way. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that proverb is language of all languages. Translation, as the most fundamental cognitive activity of human being, is a sort of relay occurring in the process of cross-culture and cross-language cognition which is now showing its ever-growing significance in his endeavor to conquer the outside world. Based on the Dictionary of Classified American Proverbs with Chinese Translation and from the perspective of broadest culture, paying special attention to slips in the dictionary, the thesis examines the process of American proverb translation with language, translator (human being himself) and the outside world as three axes, aiming at providing a set of feasible theories on proverb translation and throwing some light on general translation theory in terms of principle, strategy and methodologyThe thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One introduces the motivations and significances of the research. It begins with the exploration of the question of"to what a degree is the translator entitled to make changes in the process of translation"to find out the three principles of translation i.e. truth, kindness and beauty, through the peripheral observation of it from the perspective of the human's civilization history. On the basis of that, the author argues to study the nature of translation with proverb translation as its observation point since most proverbs, in the author's mind, are the combinations of the three elements of truth, kindness and beauty. Chapter Two begins with a review of proverb translation literature and furthers the exploration with Dictionary of Classified American Proverbs with Chinese Translation as its focus by giving an assessment of the proverb translation theories. On the basis of that, the chapter continues by giving a classification of the contemporary translation theories and points out the unfortunate trend that they mostly stress more on the product of translation than the process of it and fail to integrate the achievements of neighboring disciplines into it to form a feasible theory. It concludes by arguing the integrated micro-macro study of translation with process as its focus. Chapter Three deals with the relationship among language, thought, culture and translation and puts forward the view that language and thought is an inseparable whole which forms the core of Culture (Culture in the current thesis means all of the reality, including physical reality and mental reality). Translation (including proverb translation) makes the receptor language change which in turn makes the receptor culture change from the inner so as to cause it to evolve into its perfect shape (or perfect Culture, which is the very combination of truth, beauty and kindness). Charter Four details the translation principles of truth, kindness and beauty and the translation strategy of"domestication as frame and foreignization as mechanism"with the examination of proverb's definitions and features as the basis. Chapter Five, being the heart of the thesis, gives an all-round observation of translation process and offers some translation-process-oriented model of proverb translation which stresses dialectical thinking and mentalese to a considerable degree. Chapter Six sums up the findings of the research and points out the defects of the thesis and directions for further research in the field.