Culture Elements In The Source Language Context And Literary Translation

By the light of my father’s smile is written by Alice Walker who is the ward winners of American Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award. The heroes and heroins in her novels and stories are often those American black women who suffer a lot in their life. Alice Walker eulogizes them hard struggle and unremitting self-improvement spirit. By the light of my father’s smile tells us a story as follows:There is a pair of black American couples. Two people are both anthropologists. They found a church work as preacher in a remote Mexico Mountain area. They have two daughters. There is an ancient alien tribes that lives in the mountain areas also. The husband and wife with their two daughters lived there for many years. At the age of fourteen, his elder daughter made love with a men from the mountain area. Her father found out and she was beaten in the bedroom. The younger daughter saw everything through the key hole of the bedroom door. Two daughters hated their father from then on. After his father’s death, his father’s soul went into the heaven. The living and the dead has launched a dialogue in order to rebuild their close relationship.During the translation of By the light of my father’s smile, the most difficulty in the process is to understand those culture elements or backgrounds in the source language context. Those culture elements or backgrounds include the following terms.1the religious element in the source language culture;2the historical element of the black people in the source language culture;3the linguistic element in the source language culture;4the feminism element in the source language culture;5:the morals element in the source language culture. So we should consider the culture elements when we engage in the literature translation. To translate those culture elements correctly is one of the key points to have a successful translation text.