On Translating Chinese Cultural Terms In A Brief History Of Chinese Aesthetic Culture Into English

With furtherance of the cultural exchanges between China and other countries andglobalization in economy, C-E translation is playing a more and more important role. Chinaboasts a long history of aesthetic culture, and C-E translation of China’s academic works inaesthetic culture is doubtlessly significant for English readers to have a better understandingof the Chinese historical tradition of her ancient aesthetic culture, thus enhancing theconstruction of China’s soft power. The book A Brief History of Chinese Aesthetic Cultureoffers a comprehensive introduction and description of the traditional ancient aesthetic cultureof feudal China, and its English translation is conducive to spreading to the English speakingworld and helping English readers to understand better the traditional Chinese aestheticculture. In view of the fact that the book has not been rendered into English, our translation ofit into English is original.The present study takes the C-E translation of “Passionate Display of Individuality inthe Warring States Period”, the fourth chapter of the book, as its research object, andadopting the traditional terms concerning translating methods, aims to solve the problem ofhow to translate the culturally loaded terms in the chapter into English. The thesis iscomposed of four chapters. Besides the first chapter introduction and the fourth oneconclusion, the second chapter discusses the definition of cultural terms and the generalprinciples and strategies in translating cultural terms which are found in Chinese academicworks in humanities and social sciences, and the third chapter, which is the backbone chapterof the thesis, is devoted to exploration into the application of those principles and the methodsapplied in translating those cultural terms found in the fourth chapter of the book, withanalysis of a lot of translation examples.In practice, the translator tries to master the cultural meaning of the Chinese culturalterms, and abiding by the basic conveying rules of the English language and keeping theEnglish translation close to the English readers’ ways of thinking and expressing, to conveythe cultural message of the Chinese cultural terms. In translating the cultural terms of thefourth chapter of the book, the translator follows the basic principles of retaining as much aspossible the Chinese cultural connotation, complying with the ways of thinking of English readers, and enhancing the readability of the translated versions. In translating methods,according to concrete conditions, the translator adopts transliteration, literal translation(possibly with some annotation inside or outside the text), free translation, using conventionalEnglish expressions, or simplification. In the translator’s opinion, with propercomplementation by other means, the literal translation can be regarded as more important toconveying the cultural message of the Chinese cultural terms.