Translation Strategies Of Culture-Specific Items

Since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997,the series has been enjoying immense popularity,and the fever shows no sign of waning even today.To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in Britain,the British Library organized an exclusive exhibition,which took the visitors to the magic core of the Harry Potter stories,as well as the origin of magic around the world based on the real-world human history.This report is based on the E-C translation of Harry Potter:A History of Magic,the namesake exhibition guidebook compiled by the curator team of the British Library.It probes into the creation of the Harry Potter series,as well as relevant fun facts regarding alchemy,herbology,astronomy,divination and so on.As an introductory book related to cultures and history,the original text contains many culture-specific items based on British(or European)language(s)and culture,as well as expressions that cannot be parted from the specific cultural context.Therefore,the translator had to intervene in translating process by adopting proper strategies to reduce possible confusion and even misunderstanding that might occur to the target text readers who lack sufficient knowledge of the source culture.This report aims to analyse the translation strategies of culture-specific items in cultural introductory texts under the analytical framework of relevance theory.Relevance theory was first proposed by Sperber and Wilson,and was later introduced into the field of translation studies by Gutt.It points out that translation is by its nature a kind of communication,and the intended meaning of the text must be inferred according to the dynamic context.As a bridge connecting different languages and cultures,a translator must fully understand the intended meaning of the source text,and then represent the information to the target readers,whose cognitive environment must be considered,so as to achieve the optimal relevance in the translation and render the information to the target text readers faithfully and effectively.In this report,the translation strategies applied for the culture-specific items in the chosen material are summarized,which fall into the following categories:annotation(including extra-textual annotation and intra-textual annotation),idiomatic translation and transcreation.The strategy of annotation enables the target text readers to be equipped with sufficient information so that they could fully understand the original meaning;the strategy of idiomatic translation may be applied when the intention of the original author can be fully conveyed by idiomatic expressions in the target language;and the strategy of transcreation may be applied when introducing coinages or new notions into the target language.It is hoped that this report would provide reference for future studies on the translation of culture-specific items.