A Study Of The Culture-specific Items’ Translation From The Perspective Of Inter-subjectivity

Translation means intercultural communication which plays a significant role inpromoting cultural exchanges and enhancing mutual understanding among nations.There is an inseparable relation between culture and language. One culture can betransmitted into another through translation, so the special cultural characteristicsunavoidably influence the translation. The cultural vacancy of the translation betweenthe original language and the target language is almost caused by the differencesbetween the two cultures, hence, how to convey the cultural meaning is often thedifficulty in translation. Culture-specific items (CSIs) are one type of these culturalspecial characteristics. To some extend, how the CSIs are translated and whatstrategies are used during translation not only influence the quality of the translationwork, but also indicates the translator’s choices of governing the translation strategies,which could be regarded as the subjectivity of the translator.Inter-subjectivity theory, which is originally a concept from philosophy, appearedin the middle of the20thcentury. Philosophers concerned that the subjectivityprinciple in contemporary western philosophy would lead to solipsism in survival andbehavior, and might cause humanistic critical analysis, and turned to the problem ofinter-subjectivity. As the study of inter-subjectivity got more extensive andcomprehensive, it turned into the fields of sociology, and linguistic studies, and finallyintroduced into translation studies.As any communication concerns more than a single subject, translation is theinter-situation between different subjects, languages and cultures. In the process oftranslation, the source text author, the target reader, and the translator are differentsubjects of translation. The translator conducts a dialogue with the author through theoriginal text, this is the inter-subjectivity between the author and the translator. And adialogue between the reader and the translator indicates the inter-subjectivity betweenthe translator and readers, which is achieved through the translated text. Translation is also a decision-making process from the beginning to the end, the translator’s choicesof translation strategies have been influenced by many objective factors such as thetranslation policies of a specific country, the text type of the ST, requirements of theclient, etc, and some subjective factors like the translator’s personal preference,understanding of the original text, his knowledge of the original and the target cultureand cultural attitude and so on.This thesis is designed to discuss the translation strategies of the CSI in the novelfrom the perspective of the inter-subjective relationship between different subjects byadopting both quantitative and qualitative approaches in the research. Aixelá’stranslation strategies of CSIs together with Nida’s classification of five subculturesare employed and the CSIs in the first and third chapter are selected from the Chinesefolk novel Tanxiang xing and the corresponding parts of the English versionSandalwood Death, taken as data and examples for research.The major findings of this study could be summarized as follows:(1) In translating CSIs from Chinese into English, the most frequently usedstrategies are intratextal gloss and linguistic translation, followed by naturalization,absolute universalization and transliteration. In the actual data, the conservationstrategies such as linguistic translation, explanation, and transliteration are used moreoften than the substitution strategies such as naturalization, absolute universalizationand deletion. Consequently, the translation contributes to retaining the foreignness andkeeping the exotic cultural flavor of source language, and helps to improves thereadability and the acceptability of the translation for the target readers.(2) The translator’s frequent usage of the strategies that maintain the originalfavor of culture-specific items during the translation of CSIs in the actual text doesnot indicate that the translator have a closer inter-subjective relationship with thesource text author than that with the target readers. Strategies that are closer to thetarget readers are also flexibly used, making the translation vivid and fresh. Inaddition, the choices of conservation strategies should be under the considerations ofthe target readers’ expectations and acceptability as well as the transmission of the source culture. Accordingly, with the harmonious inter-subjectivity as the objective,the source text author, the translator, and the target text reader communicate andinteract with each other.(3) During the process of the translation, the translator is an integratedmanifestation of the dynamic inter-subjectivity among the source text author, and thetarget text reader. The inter-subjective dialogue between the STA, translator and TTRis verified useful for the translator to balance the relationship between fidelity,readability and acceptability in order to produce a literary translation that includescreative treason and fidelity. As a conclusion, when translating literary works withcultural information, more emphasis should be put on the inter-subjectivity amongdifferent subjects to improve quality of the translation than on the choices oftranslation strategies such as foreignization or domestication. Therefore, it is essentialto overcome creatively the limitations of translation in the pursuit of faithfulreproduction of the original work, and make the translation recognizable andacceptable to the target text readers.