Cultural Background and Translation [2]
论文作者:英语论文论文属性:职称论文 Scholarship Papers登出时间:2010-03-06编辑:lisa点击率:25300
论文字数:2000论文编号:org201003060947428148语种:英语 English地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:Cultural BackgroundTranslation
This is simply because the criteria of the quality of translating depends on besides the skilful applying of Chinese-English and good theory of translation ,it also relies on the cultural background knowledge we have. The three cannot be divided forever. Many students tend to ignore the third factor that the meanings of target deviate from the source text. Background knowledge usually in common sense refers to the cultural background knowledge and includes to some extent professional knowledge. So besides the ability of applying two language and rich theory of translation, we also need to skillfully master its related cultural background knowledge. Though difficulty it is, we also should do our best.
1. Cultural tradition and translation
Cultural tradition refers to some distinctive social factors passing from generation to generation, mainly including literature, art, education, science, etc. Some allusions also are related to the cultural traditions. In Edgar Snow’s famous work Red star over china<<西行漫记>>: “It was early June and Peking wore the green lace of spring, its thousands of willows and imperial cypresses making the Forbidden City a place of wonder and enchantment. Here well-fed foreigners could live in their own little never-never land of whisky-and-soda...”Our famous translator Dong Leshan translates this text which are as follows: “ 那是六月初, 北京披上了春天的绿装, 无数的杨柳和巍峨的松柏把紫禁城变成了一个迷人的奇境.在这里, 饱食终日的外国人,可以在自己的小小世外桃源里过着....”(from https://www.dotranslation.com/theory/k1275htm,2006-8-11.15:15).We can see that this text is perfectly translated. Especially,“never-never land” we may tend to translate it according to its literal meaning, but, in fact, it is an allusion which means an imaginary, idyllic or dream land from a science-fiction Peter pan from Barrie J.M. So in Chinese cultural traditions “never-never land” should be equivalent to “世外桃源”. Because this way of translating is easily accepted by Chinese people. In other words, the way of translating shows that Dong Leshan knows a large amount of cultural background knowledge. Besides, we know that English nationalities have the cultural tradition of viewing dogs as their lovely pets, while we Chinese people reckon the dragon as imperial symbol .So when we translate the Chinese dragon which involved animals, we can take the measure of directly translating. But in order to tell the word, in western language we can indirectly translate according to western culture. For instance, “我们的确害怕数学老师,她真是一个凶狠的脾气很坏的女人。” “We were really frightened of the maths teacher. She was a real dragon. ” Moreover, “I am no hamlet.” The sentence should be translated as “我决不犹豫。”rather than “我不是哈姆雷特。” (包惠南,包昂,2004:277). For if we ever read Shakespeare’s work Hamlet , we may know that the hero hamlet in the work hesitates to avenge for his father .So “hamlet” here means “undeterminable”. Here are still a lot of examples which can show the influence of traditional culture on translating. The first one is “He is changing to Rip Van Winkle.” In the sentence “Rip Van Winkler” refers to a hero. After sleeping for 20 years, he is far behind his time. E.g.: “This is the opinion of some Rip Van Winkle” here means “这是一些不识时务的意见”. It is the same with the next example “He is a kindly Fagin who shelters a nest of adolescent thieves.” Its perfect translation is “他是个貌似和善,唆使小孩犯罪的老坏蛋,窝藏了一伙少年盗贼”. Fagin refers to an old man in Oliver twist. So here we should not directly translate as “费金”. In English traditional cult
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