Analysis On Translation Of Shanghai Culture From The Perspective Of Cultranslation Theory

Shanghai culture,as a unique local culture in China,has been mature in the decades of development after the opening of Shanghai,and has generated many literature works with Shanghai cultural characteristics.One of the masterpieces of Shanghai School Literature,Chang Hen Ge,set in Shanghai from the 1940 s to the 1980 s,depicts the tragic fate of the protagonist Wang Qiyao.Start with the traditional Shanghai architecture “longtang”,Wang Anyi makes comprehensive narration of Shanghai landscape and social development for decades,thus reflecting particular Shanghai culture and time-changing scenes.The only English version-The Song of Everlasting Sorrow-A Novel of Shanghai was a collaboration work of Michael Berry,a professor at the University of California,Los Angeles,and Susan Chan Egan,an independent scholar at the University of California,Santa Barbara.Chang Hen Ge won the Fifth Mao Dun Literature Award in 2000 and was nominated for the Booker International Literature Award in 2011.It can be seen that the original and translated version of Chang Hen Ge has been recognized by the Chinese and Western literary circles to a certain extent,and have become a successful case of overseas communication of modern and contemporary Chinese literature.The author believes that as a local culture,the translation of Shanghai culture in the English version of Chang Hen Ge deserves the attention of scholars in translation studies.Cultranslation has gradually become the focus of academic research in the field of translation studies since cultural turn came into stage.Among them,the Cultranslation Theory proposed by Liu Miqing has been a great breakthrough in domestic translation studies.In his monograph Culture and Translation,Liu proposes the idea that language functions the main stem of cultranslation,and he systematically explained the four core issues,including cultural explanation of meaning,cultural interpretation of text,explanation of cultural psychology and representation theory of cultranslation in this monograph,which is no doubt a highlight providing us a new framework and perspective for studies on cultranslation.Liu Miqing believes that cultural understanding begins with the interpretation of cultural information in the text.Translators should scan the cultural information under the structure of cultural system,and apply the redeeming approaches of imitation,explanation,substitution and deculturation to deliver the meaning of the text in aesthetic manner.With the increasing importance of Chinese culture's overseas communication,the research on translation of Shanghai culture in the English version of Chang Hen Ge is worthy of exploration.In this thesis,the author classifies the cultural information of Shanghai traditional architecture,utensils,institutions,social customs,language habits,and mental activities of the original novels into cultural systems proposed by Liu,and analyzes the application of redeeming approaches such as imitation,explanation,substitution and deculturation.By doing so,the author summarizes the effects of translation on meaning delivering and aesthetic representation,and investigates the causes of mistranslation in the text.This thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter works as the introduction of research background,research purposes and significance,research questions and research methodology.The second chapter is the literature review,mainly focusing on the study of cultranslation at home and abroad,the study of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,as well as the research on authors and translators of Chang Hen Ge.The third chapter functions as a theoretical framework,which gives an overview of Liu Miqing's Cultranslation Theory based on his monograph Culture and Translation.The fourth chapter is the case study of the translation of the Shanghai culture in Chang Hen Ge from the perspective of Liu Miqing's Cultranslation Theory.The fifth chapter summarizes the research findings and limitations.