4.3.8 Deletion.18
4.4 Summary.19
Chapter Five Conclusion .20
5.1 Major Findings.20
5.2 Limitations and Suggestions21
References22
A Study on the Translation Methods of Chinese Culturally-loaded Words & Expressions from the Perspective of Skopos Theory—A Case Study of Lynette Shi's English Version Camel Xiangzi
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 The Significance and Purpose of the Study
With the rapid development of cultural, economic and political communication among countries in the world, China now is faced with different cultures. At the same time, China pays more attention to present its own colorful culture to the outside world. Chinese literature, an important part of Chinese culture, entails wisdom and art of China and depicts colorful life of Chinese people. Therefore, it is significant for us to show our literature to the world by translation in order to make people from all over the world appreciate our culture. However, it is difficult for translators to translate some Chinese culture-loaded words. Thus, the translation of those words is the most significant part in translating. The research on translation methods of Chinese culture-loaded words in Camel Xiangzi in the thesis may offer useful skills and methods for translating Chinese literature.
1.2 The Structure of the Thesis
The structure of this thesis is as follows:
Chapter One introduces the significance and purpose of the study as well as the thesis structure.
Chapter Two reviews the literature from two aspects: a brief introduction of Camel Xiangzi written by Lao She and previous research on the translation of culture-loaded words in Camel Xiangzi.
Chapter Three elucidates the theoretical foundation of this thesis, the skopos theory. It introduces functional translation theory and Hans Vermeer’s skopos theory. It also introduces the definition of culture and culture-loaded words and Nida’s categorization of culture-loaded words in the novel.
Chapter Four constitutes the major body of the thesis, in which the author attempts to explore factors conditioning the choice, briefly reviews other scholars’ translation methods of culture-loaded words, and translator’s choice of translation methods.
Chapter Five ends with the chief findings from the body part and points out the limitations and suggestions for further studies.
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 A Brief Introduction to Camel Xiangzi
Camel Xiangzi, written by Lao She, is regarded as a masterpiece of modern Chinese literature. It has been translated into over a dozen languages. The novel describes Xiangzi’s whole woeful and poor life. He is a rickshaw puller and lived in Beijing in the 1930s. Xiangzi was an honest and kind man at first, but he eventually was despaired after he went through lots of misery. Camel Xiangzi is a good novel to introduce the Chinese culture with abundant Chinese culture-loaded words in it. Therefore, the novel and its translated versions are fine materials for us to study translation methods of culture-loaded words.
2.2 Previous Research on the Translation of Culture-loaded Words in Camel Xiangzi
Research on the translation of culture-loaded words in Camel Xiangzi mainly focuses on two aspects: a brief review on the culture-loaded words under the instruction of theories other than skopos theory and the comparative study on the culture-loaded words in the two or three English versions of Camel Xiangzi.
On the one hand, Wangying (2012) takes the English version of Camel Xiangzi translated by Lynette Shi as a case study. In her thesis, she analyzes translation methods of Chinese culture-loaded words and the Beijing dialect in the light of resistant translation. Dong Qing (2013) selects over three hundred culture-loaded words from the novel and pides them into proper nouns and common expressions. Based on ratios of translation methods the translator employs, this thesis studies conditioning factors of translation choices.