On The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In Xixiang Ji From The Perspective Of Cultural Presupposition

As one of the four great plays in ancient China, Xixiang Ji, with its beautifullanguage and rich cultural connotations, can be hailed as a treasure in Chinese literaryworld. However, researches on this classical literary work are far from satisfactory,and experts and scholars who devote themselves to the translation study of this workare even fewer. These countable translation studies mainly analyze the translation ofXixiang Ji from such perspectives as intertextuality, functional equivalence andreception aesthetics. The author of the paper holds that Xixiang Ji contains muchcultural knowledge, so its translation study is in essence the study of culturaltransmission. As an emerging cultural perspective, cultural presupposition serves as aneffective theoretical support for cultural translation, so its application to the translationof Xixiang Ji can be expected to put some new blood into the translation studies of thiswork and further enhance the transmission of Chinese culture.Presupposition was initially a philosophical concept. It aroused heated debatesamong scholars and experts ever since it was introduced to the linguistic field in1970s.The combination of presupposition and linguistics has undergone constantimprovement, from semantic presupposition to pragmatic presupposition and then tocultural presupposition. Cultural presupposition is pragmatic presupposition under acertain cultural background. Cultural presupposition refers to ideology such asthinking modes, beliefs and values, etc. and ways of behavior that are shared bymembers of a certain community. Cultural presupposition differs with nation.Therefore, in the process of translation cultural presuppositions are one of the majorobstacles.This paper is an attempt to study the translation of culture-loaded words inXixiang Ji from the perspective of cultural presupposition. Through a comparativeanalysis of Xu Yuanchong’s version and Stephen H. West and Wilt L. Idema’s version,the author tries to make a summary of the translation strategy they adopt respectively. There are four major categories of culture-loaded words, i.e. Buddhist terms, allusions,forms of address, and idioms and proverbs. In dealing with these culture-loaded words,Xu Yuanchong and West and Idema adopt largely different translation strategies.Considering the acceptability of target readers, Xu Yuanchong mainly adoptsdomestication, omitting source cultural presupposition and providing target readerswith a highly intelligible rendition. West and Idema mainly adopt foreignization,trying to retain original cultural information in their translation and expose targetreaders to exotic cultural flavor. In view of different cultural presuppositions, theyoffer footnotes as further explanations. Although the translation is relatively poor inreadability, it can be a big contribution to cultural communication.