The Cultural Factors in Translation Between Chinese and English1

1、英汉互译中的文化因素the cultural factors in translation between chinese and englishcontentsabstract：.1key words: .1i introduction.1ii what is culture?.2iii what is the content of culture?.3iv historical culture.4v regional culture.5vi values.56.1 appellation and relatives.66.2 religion.66.3 ways of thinking a

2、nd writing.6vii customs.87.1 food.87.2 colors.87.3 addressing.97.4 family.9viii the factors that can be translated and those that cant be translated.9ix translation strategies.109.1 substitution109.2 adaptation.119.3 footnotes .12x conclusion.12references.13 the cultural factors in translation betwe

3、en chinese and englishthe cultural factors in translationbetween chinese and english摘 要：文化差异是翻译中的障碍和难题，要在两种语言之间进行翻译，除了通晓两种语言文字外，还必须了解两种文化，并能深刻理解两种文化的差异。本文将从什么是文化，以及从历史文化、地域文化、生活习惯、价值观（包括伦理道德，意识形态，宗教信仰，以及与此相关的称谓语和亲属关系）、思维方式和行文特点等几个方面，论述中西方文化的差异,并分析文化中的不可译性和文化翻译的策略。关键词：文化 文化因素 文化翻译 文化差异 英汉互译 翻译策略 abst

4、ract：culture difference is a difficult problem and obstacle in translation. if we want to translate between chinese and english, we should make acquainted with the two languages and we have to understand the two cultures, and we must profoundly comprehend the culture differences. firstly this paper

5、will talk about what is culture, and then discuss culture differences from the aspects of historical culture, regional culture, custom, values (including ethical criteria, ideology, religion, and the relevant terms of addressing and relations of kinship) and ways of thinking and writing. finally i w

6、ill analyze the factors that cant be translated and cultural translation strategies.key words: culture; cultural factors; cultural translation; culture differences; c-e translation; translation strategiesi introductionchinas rapid economic growth has put the country in the globe spotlight, and has m

7、ade overseas greatly interested in china, and a large number of books have been introduced to china. china as one of the oldest countries in the world attracts attention of the world people, but limited knowledge and language barriers have been the major hurdles for foreigners to know china better.

8、so translation is the main way to solve this problem. the reason for translation as the main method is that it has many practical functions, and it is a vital channel of cultural exchange between different nations, as well as an indispensable mode of human social communication. and now translation b

9、etween chinese and english has covered every aspect of society in order to meet the needs of social development. the functions of it under different culture background or different era are not always the same. as a translator, he or she should be able to answer such questions: “what to translate? wh

10、en to translate？how to translate and for whom?” in order to answer these questions, we must understand the function of translation and the social background that are related to. translation is an important constituent of the human language activity, also is used by different nationalities, the natio

11、nals intercommunication. translation itself by nida (1976:75) is viewed as “essentially an aspect of a larger domain, namely, that of communication”. steiner (1975:47) pointed out that after babel takes an even wider view of translation “inside or between languages; human communication equals transl

12、ation”, hence, translation is discussed within the wider context of communication, extending ideas put forward by a variety of translation. therefore the activity of translation includes a series of language conversion; it is also the social and psychological activities in essence. newmarks (1995) t

13、wo statements are “translation is the most economical method of explaining one cultures way to another” and “translation mediates culture”. translation is a decision-making process in a certain social culture frame. the translators decision not merely depends on the language he/she learns, but also

14、on the cultural environment of a specific era to a great extent. (culture and translation) translation process can no longer be envisaged as being between two languages but between two cultures involving “cross-cultural transfer” (snall-hornby, 1998). during the translation process, translators will

15、 have to deal with problems such as culture differences, linguistic differences, and so on. how can these factors affect translation? the culture is the most important factor in translation, when we read the books, sometimes we know the words of a phrases or sentences, but our comprehension is wrong

16、. why? that is because there are cultural differences, and our ignorance of the source language cultures. what does “culture” means?ii what is culture?there are more than one thousand of definitions of culture. one of the oldest and mostly quoted definitions of culture was formulated by the english

17、anthropologist edward burbert taylor in 1871:“culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”the other definition was defined by american anthropologist alfred louis kroeber and c

18、lyde kluckhohn (1961:181) who had compiled a list of 164 definitions; their lengthy (165th) contribution was as follows:“culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including th

19、eir embodiment in artifacts: the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values. culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning elements of future ac

20、tion.”(translating cultures: an introduction for translators, interpreters, and mediators, 2004:16)there are so many different definitions about “culture”，“but no mater how it is defined, culture is the total sum of the material wealth and the intellectual wealth which have been created in the whole

21、 process of human social and historical development, or to the way of life or life- style, possessing the time, the spatial significance, which are the most basic characteristics. (wang kefei, 1997:2).iii what is the content of culture? ke ping (1994) mentioned that lots of cultural scientists have

22、divided culture into four parts. firstly, the technical system; this includes production and science skills. secondly, the social system includes politics, customs, history, law, social classes and education. thirdly, ideology; this consists of religion, art, and way of thinking. the fourth is the l

23、inguistic system, which includes grammar and semantic. this shows that culture covers almost every aspect of society. similarly, david has also stressed about the same idea, where culture can be divided into: 1). microcosm culture, which includes ideas, behaviors and products. 2). macrocosm culture,

24、 which includes history, geography, institutions, cultural art craft (music, art, literature).as a cultural transmission carrier, translations influence is profound in the development of social, now globalization of the world science and technology, the economical and the information network speeds

25、up unceasingly. cultural polycystic integrations are clear; the translation cultural function is day by day obvious. so the fundamental way to deal with translation is to approach the culture of the source language, and we should understand the source language and the target language. as bassinet an

26、d lefevere (1992) have said, “translation reflects a certain ideology and poetics and as such manipulates literature to function in a given society in a given way” (bassinet & lefevere: “translation/history/culture” 1992). because english and chineses culture have the different background in histori

27、cal, social, political, economical and the natural condition that formed their ideology, ways of thinking, values, manners and customs. in order to translate an article properly, it is a requirement for a translator to have a good knowledge of source culture and target culture, and a good translator

28、 attaches much importance to the equivalence of messages conveyed in the translated work so that the target language readers will respond to the translation similarly as the source language readers to the original.this article draws up from several aspects, such as, the historical culture, the regio

29、n culture, the custom culture, the religious culture, the life style, ways of thinking and values, and chats the questions of which cultural differences there are and what should be paid attention to the translation and how to deal with different cultures by using suitable strategies and methods.iv

30、historical culturehistorical culture is composed of the special process of the history of the nations and social inheritance precipitates. in ancient time, people lived in a separate environment, the country and nation had different process of development, so every nation had their own historical cu

31、lture. when we translate works of literature, the historical culture is the biggest problems we have ever met.historical literary reference is the most content of historical culture. it is the treasure of national historical culture. it has thick nation color and bright cultural characteristic. it c

32、ontents a mount of information of historical culture and can manifests that different nation has different historical culture characteristic. if we want to translate well, we have to know the connotation of the historical culture and use different methods according to the different situation and con

33、tent, or it is impossible to make the listener or reader understand clearly. for example, the chinese idiom “东施效颦”, if we translate it into “tung shi imitates hsi shi”, the foreign reader will be puzzled, because we know the history that we understand its connotation. if we want to make the foreigne

34、r understand clearly, we should say: “tung shi imitates hsi shi, his shi was a famous beauty in the ancient kingdom of yue. tung shi was an ugly girl who tried to imitate her way.” when they know history that they understand the idiom. there is another example; “三个臭皮匠顶个诸葛亮”zhu geliang is a well-know

35、n people in chinese history. everyone knows who he is. in china he is the symbol of wit. the foreign reader doesnt know who zhu geliang is and what the relation between him and cobblers is. if we use literary translation to express the historical knowledge, we can translate it into “three cobblers w

36、ith their wits combined equal zhu geliang the ancient master mind”. v regional cultureregion culture is that different nation lives in different places, so they have different nature condition and different geographical environment. each nation has formed their own special culture. we know that the

37、same phenomenon and the same object in different nations have different language expressions. from the point of traditions: english people live on island; peoples life has big relation with the sea, so in english there are a lot of words about navigation or original navigation. in contrast, in china

38、 the center culture is continental culture. in ancient china, the center of culture is far away from the sea, in chinese, there are no words equivalent to the words about navigation, for example, able seaman, means “一级水手”, not “能干的水手（capable sailor）”, be left high and dry means “in trouble” not “高高在

39、上”. and we can know the differences in region culture from the position and its equivalent words, such as: in china if someone became the emperor, we will say face south back north (面南背北), and we always say “从南到北, 南来北往”,we always say the “南” first. but in english its not like that, if they say “从南到北

40、”is form north to south . “ 北屋” is “a room with a southern exposure.” there are some position words ,such as “西北”、 “西南”、 “东北”、 “东南”, they are converse to chinese in english. “northwest”、 “southwest” 、“northeast” 、“southeast”. in china, most people live on land. from ancient to now, agriculture plays

41、 a very important role in peoples life and society. in china, food is the first necessity of man. there are so many words and idioms related to agriculture, but in english we cant find the equivalent words. for example, in china when we meet somebody on the road, the chinese always say: “吃了吗?”. in e

42、nglish, because they live in an island, the weather changes quickly, they always talk about weather when they meet other people, such as: “its cold, isnt it?”vi values values include ethical criteria, ideology, religion, and relevant terms of addressing and relations of kinship. its the core of spec

43、ial culture and ways of life. the values of the chinese culture have deep humanism spirit; on the contrary, the westerners have the personality of the extroversion.6.1 appellation and relatives.in china, we have a long history of feudal society and agriculture ploughs culture is the main culture. ch

44、inese culture is a group-oriented culture. the relatives and relation of society is clear and strict which forms a special social system. the blood relation is based on cognation. from ancient china, the family always has a large number of people; there are always several generations living together

45、. in chinese there are lots of words about appellation, and the relation among the members of the family is transparent. in western country, there are nuclear families, western people emphasize individual life and like individual adventure. when children grown up, they will leave the family and have

46、 their own family. therefore their family is very small, they always less than ten people in one family. so, one word can represent several appellations. for example, in english, the word uncle has a far wider range of meaning than its chinese counterpart. it could refer to what we call 叔叔、伯父、舅舅、姨父.

47、6.2 religion in chinese and in english they have different religions. we can find this from the languages. in english there are a lot of words and idioms originated from bible. bible plays an important role in the process and development of western civilization. in english, people believe in god. in

48、 china the buddhism is popular. people think there are lots of gods. the two cultures have their own characteristic in thinking mode, language expressions, lexical connotations, and lexical image. when we translate, we should pay attention to the religion. for example, “talk to each other, play toge

49、ther oh, and one more thing: be thankful for each other.” if we translate the last sentence as “要彼此怀有感激之心”. its wrong, according to christianitys teaching everything is created by god, people should appreciate god for whatever they have, and there the prepositions is “for”, not “to”. we should make

50、the reader understand cleary, “.oh, and one more thing: be thankful for each other” is “哦，还要记住一件事: 要为拥有彼此而感谢上帝”.6.3 ways of thinking and writingchinese peoples firm psychological structure is embodied in the idea of unifying: pay attention to the authority and ignore the fact; pay attention to a gro

51、up and ignore the individual. the westerners psychological structure is more complicated and loose. and they pay more attention to the individual. this has formed the peculiar cultural psychology in western culture. there are differences in the ways of thinking. there are also differences in the mod

52、es of expression. but there is no thinking which is not a mode of expression and no expression which is not a way of thinking. as a matter of fact, the ways of thinking and modes of expression are so inseparably bound up with each other that the distinction between the two is nothing more than a log

53、ical one. and the differences in the ways of thinking are always manifested in the different modes of expression. for instance, a sharp sense of distinction is reflected in our ideas of family relationships, as in the different ranks of brothers, cousins, nephews, uncles and aunts; while the native

54、speakers of english do not make much of such distinctions, thus , we have “大舅子”、“小舅子”、 “大伯子”、“小叔子”、“姐夫”、“妹夫”, ect. whereas in english, the wifes brother, the husbands brother, the elder sisters husband and younger sisters husband are called brothers-in-law.chinese and english people live in differen

55、t cultural environment and have different living habits and thinking modes. if the sentence, “she is a cat”, is translated into chinese like “她是一只猫”, then it is just opposite to what the writer (speaker) wants to convey, for in chinese culture, a cat is quiet, gentle, submissive and lovely. while in

56、 western culture, a cat is sly, sinister and diabolic. the same is true of the idiom “吃醋”. in chinese, the idiom is often used to describe jealous husbands (men) or wives (women), but “vinegar” in english does not have that kind of meaning at all. when it is used in english to describe people, it me

57、ans “bad tempered”, “not happy or glad”. we need to make some equivalent change while translating. for instance, english people love discussing the weather while they meet no matter in a city or in a rural area. when they say, “lovely weather, isnt it?” they dont mean to talk about the weather. in fact, it is the s