A Study Of Translation Strategies Of Culture-loaded Terms From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Culture-loaded terms are those words with their own characteristics, which are formed on every nation’s different geographical environment, people’s life style, the nation’s historical background, including people’s religious belief and their customs, etc. These words contain cultural meanings both in original and in conceptual sense, they directly or indirectly reflect the nation’s different cultural life and they can also transmit the nation’s cultural information. Culture-loaded terms can define as a kind of food, we can call it concrete, thing, They can also define as abstract concept,for example, a religious belief. Eugene Nida, a well-known American translation theorist, put culture into five categories systematically, which are ecology, material culture, social culture, religious culture and linguistic culture. So in my thesis, culture-loaded terms in Three Kingdoms are also put into five categories according to Nida’s view:1) ecological culture-loaded terms, it consists of mountains, rivers,the name of states,and great event etc.;2) material culture-loaded terms, it includes tools and objects, etc.;3) social culture-loaded terms, social organizations, class, social practices and social implications of actions are belong to it;4) religious culture-loaded terms, it refers to the religious routine and beliefs, titles and names of deities;5) linguistic culture-loaded terms, it includes the specific characteristics of the respective language, such as numbers and idioms.In1964, Nida put forward Functional Equivalence Theory. This theory is one of his very important and influential theories. Functional Equivalence Theory provides a totally new perspective for studying translation. It firstly emphasizes achieving the closest natural equivalent to the source language in meaning, and then in style. In addition, the theory also put emphasis on the significance of the form. Nida insists that the form of the message is the focus of translation in the passing years,but the new focus of translating should be on the response of the receptors. Formal equivalence in translation focuses on verbal correspondence in languages; on the contrary, functional equivalence in translation is oriented on resders. It place enphasis on the relationship between readers and the translation. From Nida’s perspective, the standard of a good translation is that even the reader doesn’t know the cultural background of the source language he can easily understand the meaning according to the translation.Three Kingdoms is one of the four greatest Chinese classical novels with the extensive use of culture-loaded terms which unfold a vast and moving picture to us. These culture-loaded terms are used to describe official titles, idioms, war words and foods, etc. Therefore, the translation of culture-loaded terms in Three Kingdoms influences the reader’s understanding of the original text,and it determines the quality of the whole translation. Scholars have made many researches on Three Kingdoms and its translation However, up to now, nobody has made a research on the English translation of culture-loaded terms in Three Kingdoms. The research conducted in this thesis is a study of the translation strategies of Chinese culture-loaded terms about the above categories in Three Kingdoms from the perspective of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory. It analyzes and discusses the translation strategies of culture-loaded terms in Robert’s version, and later summarizes the general translation strategies of culture-loaded terms.It is helpful to translate the Chinese classics.from the perspective of Functional Equivalence Theory, when we translat culture-loaded terms we can adopt five translation strategies, they are transliteration, literal translation, free translation, amplification and annotation. We can say that In actual translation practice, the five translation strategies are not separated from each other and complementary to each other.they work together to achieve a good translation.There are five chapters in this thesis. The introduction part include four parts, which are Research Background, Purpose of the Study, Significance of the Study and the Structure of the paper. Chapter Two is about Literature Review, in which are introduced the original Chinese version of Three Kingdoms and the English version translated by Moss Roberts, and then a definition is given and a classification is made of culture-loaded terms. Chapter Three is the theoretical foundation of the thesis-Functional Equivalence Theory. In the first place, Eugene Nida’s Theory of Functional Equivalence is introduced, and then the influence of Functional Equivalence Theory is discussed. Chapter Four is mainly about the specific analysis of Moss Roberts’translation of culture-loaded terms in Three Kingdoms from the perspective of Functional Equivalence. The culture-loaded terms are classified into five categories,(ecological terms, material terms, social terms, religious terms and linguistic terms) and the author tries to discuss the translation strategies adopted by Moss Roberts. Chapter Five is the conclusion part, which is the summary of the whole thesis.