A Descriptive Analysis On The Translation Strategies Of CSIs(Culture-Specific Items)-A Case Study Of Stories To Caution The World

In the 1970 s,the cultural turn of translation studies in the west led more translation researchers to focus on the cultural factors in translation;in fact,culture is the bond to strengthen the communication and understanding between the nations.In recent years,the Chinese government has proposed a national strategy of“global-going of Chinese culture”,encouraging more Chinese classics to be translated into foreign languages,intended to let the world know more about Chinese traditional culture and to understand China's traditional values,thus to establish our cultural self-confidence.Jingshi Tongyan,whose translated version is Stories to Caution the World translated by Shuhui Yang and Yunqin Yang(S.H.Yang & Y.Q.Yang,2005),is one of the novels among sanyan erpai of the Ming and the Qing Dynasties in China,which vividly depicts a colorful picture of the anecdotes and folk customs of the society at that time.For western readers,Stories to Caution the World is not only an interesting book for recreation but also a mirror to understand the society and customs of China's the Ming and the Qing Dynasties and to understand Chinese traditional culture.Therefore,it is of great practical significance to study the translation strategies of the CSIs in Stories to Caution the World in which five chapters are randomly selected,and they are Yu Boya Smashes His Zither in Gratitude to an Appreciative Friend,Three Times Wang Anshi Tries to Baffle Academician Su,Lü Yu Returns the Silver and Brings about Family Reunion,Chen Kechang Becomes an Immortal during the Dragon Boat Festival and Madam White Is Kept Forever under Thunder Peak Tower respectively.Cultural specific items refer to linguistic expressions that have a certain national or cultural identity and may cause difficulties in understanding during the translation process,including a culturally specific substance,social customs,language habits,and so on.CSIs are a manifestation of cultural characteristics and the success of its translation is crucial for the target-language readers to understand and appreciate the charm of the source language culture in the source text.Therefore,the translators are very thoughtful while dealing with the translation methods of CSIs,which is worth studying.Aixelá thinks that there are 11 methods to deal with the translation of CSIs.This thesis corresponds and conducts descriptive analysis on the 10 translations methods based on the collection of CSIs in the selected text.Based on the theory of descriptive translation studies,this paper does not judge the translation quality,instead,it puts its translation into the social environment and culture at that time to examine the translator's motivation for the choices.After statistical and motivational analysis of the CSIs in the source text and their English translation strategies,the paper concludes that the translation strategy is more inclined to foreignization,which means preserving the cultural characteristics of the source language so as to let foreign readers know more about Chinese culture.On the basis of collecting and classifying the CSIs in the five chapters of Stories to Caution the World,this thesis collects the statistics on the corpus of the selected CSIs,and the statistics find that the translators use the method of repetition and linguistic translation most in the translation process,which reflects the obvious tendency of foreignization.The reason can be inferred that the translators are to preserve as many Chinese cultural characteristics as possible to promote the development and influence of the source culture in the target-language culture,and to promote target-language readers to have more exposures to the source language-culture.In the research on the influence of the translated text,this paper also finds that the translated version of Stories to Caution the World has attracted the interest of a small number of foreign readers since its publication.Some of the readers have highly praised the work from which they think that more information about Chinese culture can be obtained through these stories.Therefore,from the analysis of the impact of the translation of Stories to Caution the World,it can be known that the translation has attracted some attention in the target-language culture,which is also conducive to the further spread of Chinese culture.