The Translation Of Culture-loaded Words In Architectural Texts

Yu County is located in Zhangjiakou City,Hebei Province,and enjoys the reputation of “a place with a history of thousands years and an ancient city in nine dynasties”,and “Hebei museum of ancient architecture and arts”.Thousands years of civilization has created the unique fortresses culture in Yu County.As the ancient architecture with strong local characteristics,the fortresses in Yu County have high research values.This paper has selected some parts from Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of Fortresses in Yu County as the translation corpus of the Chinese-English Translation practice.It is hoped that this translation practice can improve the local people’s awareness of protecting the fortresses and familiarize the westerners with Chinese traditional fortresses culture.The translation corpus belongs to architectural texts,and this translation practice mainly focuses on the translation of culture-loaded words.Four types of problems are encountered in the translation of the culture-loaded words: names of architecture with multiple versions but without a standard version,architectural techniques without corresponding terminology in the target language,architectural decorations with no corresponding cultural connotations in the target language,the loss of historical and cultural connotation in the translation of words concerning architectural history.The method of separate translation of proper and generic names is used to solve the problem of architectural names with multiple versions but without a standard version.The methods of transliteration with annotation,addition of background information,and semantic interpretation are used to solve the problems of culture-loaded words concerning architectural techniques,architectural decorations and architectural history.Hopefully,this paper can provide some reference for Chinese-English translation of similar architectural texts in the future.