A Study Of The Translation Of The Culture-loaded Expressions In Peking Opera As Exemplified In Phoenix Returns To Its Nest

Peking Opera is the treasure of traditional Chinese culture. In 2010, it had been named by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization as the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The unique music, song, costume and facial make-up altogether show rich Chinese characteristics. Over the past few decades, more and more Peking Operas have been played on the foreign stage. Therefore, the theatrical translation of Peking Opera has become increasingly important. But the existing translation mainly focus on the terminology translation, stage direction translation and the Opera title translation.The language in Peking Opera is concise and full of Chinese characteristics. A number of Chinese idioms, proverbs and four-character structures can be found in Peking Opera. As a result, there are many culture-loaded expressions in Peking Opera. These expressions pose great challenges for the translators of Peking Opera. Also, Peking Opera text is an on-stage text, which means the translator needs to take perform-ability, speak-ability, and play-ability into consideration when dealing with the translation of an on-stage text. Therefore, the translation methods for culture-loaded expressions in Peking Opera stage text are different from those for pure literature text. And the existing research rarely pays attention to the translation of culture-loaded expressions in Peking Opera text for stage.This thesis conducts a qualitative and quantitative research on the translation of the culture-loaded expressions in Phoenix Returns to Its Nest from the perspective of relevance theory. The author finds 115 culture-loaded expressions in Phoenix Returns to Its Nest and classifies these expressions into four categories, aiming to do find the suitable translation methods for culture-loaded expressions in Peking Opera.Firstly, the author finds more than 115 culture-loaded expressions in Phoenix Returns to Its Nest, which is published by the New World Press in 1986. And then, the author divides these expressions into four groups based on Nida’s classification of culture. Those expressions include 12 material culture-loaded expressions,54 social culture-loaded expressions, 9 religious culture-loaded expressions and 40 linguistic culture-loaded expressions. Lastly, the author analyzes the translation of these expressions by applying the relevance theory.Major findings are listed as below:firstly, the translation methods applied in Elizabeth Wichmann’s translation of Phoenix Returns to its Nest include substitution, literal translation, liberal translation explanatory translation, literal translation plus addition, literal translation plus liberal translation, omission. Secondly, among those translation methods, literal translation (55), liberal translation (36) and substitution (15) are three main translation methods. Thirdly, the translations of culture-loaded expressions in Peking Opera are terse because of the particular requirements for the stage performance. Fourthly, the translation of the culture-loaded expressions in lyrics and conventional speeches, which are in the form of verse, are affected by the characteristics of verse. Fifthly:annotation, which is commonly used for culture-loaded expression translation in other text types, is not found in the translation of Phoenix Returns to Its Nest. Lastly, most translations maintain the original Chinese cultural features through literal translation.