On The Translation Of Chinese Culture-loaded Words In Chinese American Literature

Chinese American literature is receiving increasing attention from academic fields at home and abroad. Most of relevant studies focus on the literal value of Chinese American Literature. This paper analyzes the English expressions of Chinese culture-loaded words in Wooden Fish Songs by setting up a parallel corpus of Chinese culture-loaded words and their English versions to conclude approaches to culture-loaded words translation in literal works and verify the approaches by relying on the three rules of the Skopos Theory. The paper finds that Chinese culture-loaded words in Wooden Fish Songs have unique features compared with those in Chinese literal works. English expressions of Chinese culture-loaded words in this novel are in the format of transliteration/literal translation plus explanation in context. On one hand, this approach reserves the cultural heterogeneity of Chinese culture-loaded words, which conforms to the fidelity rule; on the other hand, this approach conveys the implicative meanings of culture-loaded words clearly by explanation in context in standard English, which conforms to the skopos and coherence rule.