Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1Research Background
Drama, as one of performance art forms, is a mature genre of literature, and itplays a significant role in the development of human civilization. Language is notonly a part of culture, but also a carrier of culture. Without language, culture cannotbe conveyed all around the world. Unlike other art forms, drama carries more culturalelement and then culture features are difficult for translators to convey from sourcelanguage to target language. To the knowledge of this viewpoint, translation ofculture-loaded terms might be a vital yet difficult task in drama translation field.Eventually, to smooth away cultural barriers has been translators’ principal task intheir translating process.With the wide spread of Chinese culture, the rendering of culture-loaded terms inthe works of Chinese drama has attracted so much attention of scholars and translators.Teahouse was published in July 1957, which is not only the masterpiece of Lao She,but also the milestone of Chinese literature. The terms in it contain many Chinesecultural images and features. In order to broaden China’s influence and to promoteinternational communication, some scholars spared no effort to translate and study it.Since the end of 1980s, the English-version Teahouse has been successfully put onstage. Many scholars did do much research into it from the perspective of certaintranslation theories. Some tackle it from the view of linguistic studies, such ascognitive theory, relevance theory, etc. However, they failed to realize that a suitabletranslation cannot be achieved without considering its readers. The receptionaesthetics focuses on the role of the readers and audience, which offers us a newperspective for its translation.
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1.2The Significance of the Study
Chinese drama has a fantastic and brilliant history and occupies a very importantposition in China’s traditional culture. Those foreigners who wish to learn about ourtraditional culture are attracted by Chinese classic literature, particularly by Chinesedrama. Lao She, one of the great masters of Chinese drama literature, publishedTeahouse--his representative in 1957. It has rich culture-loaded terms which fully reflect the cultural background in his times. Therefore, it is of great significance fortranslation-majors to conduct a systematic study on its translation. And it is essentialto find out proper and suitable approaches to fulfill the target readers’ pleasure.Certainly, reception Aesthetics is of much help to us in achieving this aim.Teahouse has been put into a number of English versions, and there are so manyscholars bending over their desks simply for doing research into them. However, mostof researchers focused on the aspects of text translation itself, such as thetranslatability, the aim of translation and linguistic mistranslation, etc., and few payattention to the study and summary of strategies applied in the translation ofculture-loaded terms in Teahouse. Domestication and foreignization are thecommonly adopted approaches in its translation. This paper will employ anothersignificant theory---reception aesthetics. The readers’ role should be considered whentranslating specific cultural messages.A standardized and fine translation is more than a transition from sourcelanguage to target language, but a cultural carrier of two nations. Hence, this paperattempts at the study of the translation strategies of culture-loaded terms in Teahouse.From the view of reception aesthetics, both the translator and the target readers of thework can determine the translation quality. This thesis tries to explain how readers'reception affects translation procedures, i.e. understanding, strategy deployment andevaluation procedure.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Relevant Studies of Teahouse Translation
With the accelerated growth of globalization, Chinese literature has becomemore and more popular with the foreign friends. They are curious about Chineseculture and eager to learn about it from various ways. Drama, as the most intuitiveapproach, is warmly welcomed by them. Therefore, the quality of its translation canaffect the image of China in the international arena.Teahouse, as the representative work of Lao She, opens a scroll of epic picturesand gains a unique status in the history of Chinese drama. The cultural messages thatit contains has aroused many scholars’ attention both abroad and at home. It has beentranslated into many English versions, and for the purpose of widely spreadingChinese culture to the world, a lot of researchers have conducted studies on thetranslation versions of it from different perspectives. This part does overall reviews ofthe relevant studies of its English translation as followings.Back to 1980, Ying Ruocheng initially translated Teahouse into English. And thenhe introduced it abroad and it captured a huge success. Later, John Howard Gibbon,who is from Canada, also completed his English translation. On the basis of theirtranslation, Teahouse was put on the international stage and spread into France,Switzerland and Germany, etc. The studies on translation of Teahouse developedprogressively.
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2.2 Culture-loaded Words
According to Wikipedia, “Cultural-loaded words refer to those words orphrases which convey a certain kind of cultural connotations or associations whichmay or may not be found in other languages or cultures.” That is to say, the culture-loaded terms contains somewhat particular cultural message, which are noteasily found by target readers. Another statement is from Mona Baker, a well-knownwoman translator. She explains the culture-loaded terms that “the readers in targetlanguage may not understand the source-language words. Such words and expressionsmay reflect people’s religion, social customs, or diet.” She declares the culture-loadedwords may have different forms. Based on the above explanations, culture-loadedwords can be understood as culture-bound terms, which express special and uniquecultural meaning in source language. They may contain the information of economics,politics, custom, religions, history and society, and reflect the national culture directlyor indirectly. Moreover, their forms are also various and classifications such as slang,the old sayings, idioms and so on. In the text of Teahouse, there are a large amount ofculture-loaded words. And it becomes one important feature of Teahouse. Thus, it iswith great necessary to pay more attention to the translation in this drama. Conceptualmeaning and associative meaning of culture-loaded words should be conveyed in ascientific and effective way when translating.
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Chapter 3 An Introduction to Reception Aesthetics.....12
3.1 Background and Development of Reception Aesthetics ......12
3.2 Basic Concepts of Reception Aesthetics ........14
3.3 Enlightenment of Translation of Culture-loaded Words ......17
Chapter 4 A Comparative Study on Translation Strategies of Culture-loaded Terms.......19
4.1 Religious Culture-loaded Terms .........19
4.2 Statistics of Culture-loaded Words in Teahouse ....21
4.3 Domestication and Foreignization Adopted in Two Versions.....21
4.4 Suggestive Strategies .........32
Chapter 5 Conclusion.........36
5.1 Summary.......36
5.2 Implications .........37
5.3 Limitations of the Research.......37
5.4 Some Suggestions .......38
Chapter 4 A Comparative Study on Translation Strategiesof Culture-loaded Terms Adopted in Two English Versions
4.1 Religious Culture-loaded Terms
In Teahouse, religious culture-loaded words scatter in many corners, forexample, “念佛” ,“纸钱”, “大坛主”, “八卦仙衣”. They reflect that people weresuffering in misery and disturbing society in that times. These words cover the deepsocial background. “大坛主” refers to a kind of people who take advantage of peoplein great despair and try to become the emperor in vain. It demonstrates the mainmeaning of Teahouse that few rulers cared about the life of common people and it isthe only solution that common people struggled against the old China on their own inthat period. In Teahouse, some material culture-loaded words are unique in china andforeign audience or readers may be confused with them without detailed explanations,for example, “炸酱面”, a kind of noodle which originates from Beijing, appears onlyin china and the majority of Chinese are fond of eating it for a long time. There aremany words ranging from food, clothes, products, vehicle, to other daily life items inTeahouse such as “圆髻”, “铁筋洋灰”, “大饼”. They show typical Chinese-style lifeand make the drama colorful and vivid.
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Conclusion
From the above discussions, it can be concluded that the theory of receptionaesthetics have an important impact on the translation of culture-loaded terms.Considering the readers’ convenience, the author made a summary of the whole text.Besides that, the limitations of the study and the suggestions for further research willbe pointed out in this chapter. With wide spreading of culture, Chinese literature is attracted by manyforeigners. They are eager to get familiar with Chinese culture. Drama, whichcontains a large number of cultural information, is warmly welcomed among them.Therefore, it is of great importance to conduct the research on its translation.Teahouse is the representative work of Lao She, and it gains the great reputation athome and abroad. It contains a lot of cultural messages which attracted sight ofscholars and target readers. The author picked up two English versions of Teahouse asthe data source of the study.Based on the theory of Reception Aesthetics, this paper has conducted thecomparison and analysis of the translation strategies of culture-loaded terms in twoEnglish versions of Teahouse. The aim is to improve the translation of qualityTeahouse by researching its strategies. The author has adopted four basic aspects ofReception Aesthetics, which are horizons of expectation, readers’ role, aestheticdistance and fusion of horizons. The author chooses Ying Ruocheng’s version andHoward Gibbon’s version of Teahouse, because they both are most classical andpopular versions. In the two different versions, some culture-loaded words inTeahouse are respectively translated by different strategies. Although their translationof culture-loaded terms has met the readers’ aesthetic horizon to some extent, theremay also exist aesthetic expectation gaps in the view of Reception Aesthetic.
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References (omitted)