A Study On English Translation Strategies Of Culture-loaded Terms In Liang Xiaosheng’s Works From The Perspective Of Functional Skopos Theory

As a masterpiece in recent years,Liang Xiaosheng’s A Lifelong Journey reflects the economic and social development of China,which is of both literary and far-reaching significance.This novel describes the struggle of ordinary people who are in pursuit of a better life,shows the social ups and downs of Chinese people’s lives over the past 50 years.It is a representative contemporary literary work to introduce the history of the Reform and Opening-up and to carry forward Chinese culture.Culture-loaded terms,also known as culture-specific terms and culture-connotative terms,are phrases that express the unique things and concepts of a certain culture,which can directly reflect the cultural information carried by the language in the language system and reflect the social life of human beings.In the 1970 s,Skopos Theory took shape in Germany.This theory is mainly pioneered and developed by Reiss,Vermeer,Mhnttari and Nord,and holds that translation is a practice based on the original text.A set of rules,including Skopos Rule,Coherence Rule,and Fidelity Rule must be obeyed.According to the Skopos Rule,translation must be able to have the impact that the target readers would expect it to have in the context and culture of the target language.Translation must adhere to the Coherence Rule,which states that translation must be coherent across languages.To put it another way,the translated text needs to be understandable,accessible,and acceptable to the target readers,which also needs to have cultural relevance.Fidelity Rule indicates that interlingual coherence is required to be illustrated between the source texts and target texts.The story of A Lifelong Journey spans a long period of time,and the abundant application of culture-loaded terms,mainly including the following four categories:ecological,material,linguistic,social culture-loaded terms,is one of the linguistic features,which have certain research value.However,a complete and authoritative English version has not yet been published.The thesis starts from promoting the overseas dissemination of Liang Xiaosheng’s literary works,taking Chapter 7 in the first part of the novel as the translation practice material.This thesis first provides a detailed account of the domestic and international evolution of Functional Skopos Theory,followed by research on translation techniques for culture-loaded terms in Liang Xiaosheng’s and other Chinese literary works.In order to determine the feasibility of Functional Skopos Theory in the translation of culture-loaded terms,the structure of the translated text is then thoroughly examined,the linguistic features of Liang Xiaosheng’s works are condensed,the translation process is summarized,and examples of culture-loaded terms are emphatically examined.From the perspective of Skopos Theory,this thesis summarizes the translation strategies of various culture-loaded terms in A Lifelong Journey,such as transliteration plus annotation,literal translation,free translation,amplification and subtraction,so as to be faithful to the original text and make the translation meet the needs and acceptance of the target readers to the greatest extent.In order to serve as a reference for the English translation of Liang Xiaosheng’s literary works and to offer English translation methodologies for various culture-loaded terms in current Chinese literary works,this thesis concludes by summarizing the main findings and limitations.