Keywords: Lin Yutang's translation strategies of cultural default names
1 Introduction
Appellation is the appellation in people's daily communication, the product of long-term rules and long-established habits of human society, bearing the lifestyles, ways of thinking, ethics and social mechanisms of different nationalities, so it has obvious national cultural characteristics. Six Chapters of a Floating Life is an autobiography copied by Shen in Qing Dynasty. The author describes all aspects of his personal life in a concise and vivid style, among which the life of Shen Fu and his wife Yun is the most touching. As a great scholar who is proficient in Chinese and Western cultures, Lin Yutang once said, "A friend who likes to be the moon commented on me and said that my greatest strength is to tell foreigners about China culture while telling China people about foreign culture. This intention is not an insult to sneak attack. I thought the comments were true. " Lin Yutang thinks that "Cloud is the most lovely woman in China literature" and "I am good at Six Chapters of a Floating Life, and I hope to translate it into English to let the world know the quiet and lovely life of a China couple." Six Chapters of a Floating Life is Lin Yutang's best translated work, which has been revised more than ten times. There are many places worth appreciating and learning from. This paper only appreciates the cultural translation of appellations involved in the book.
2 translation strategies
2. 1 Domestication and foreignization
18 13 schleiermacher, a famous German linguist and translation theorist, mentioned two ways of cultural translation in his paper On Translation Methods: "One way is to make the author live as long as possible and guide readers to get close to the author; Another way is to let the reader live as long as possible and guide the author to approach the reader. " On this basis, Venuti called these two methods "foreignization" and "domestication" respectively in his book The Translator's Invisibility. Therefore, domestication and foreignization in translation strategies have been put forward. Domestication holds that the destination of translation should be the target language or the target reader, while foreignization holds that translation should be the source language or the original author.
2.2 Lin Yutang's view of translation
Lin Yutang published many articles on translation theory in his life, but the most systematic and weighty translation theory is On Translation, which is divided into four parts. The first part puts forward three principles of translation criteria, namely, faithfulness, expressiveness and beauty. The second part discusses all aspects of the fidelity standard in detail, points out that the names of literal translation and free translation are inappropriate, and puts forward two concepts: word translation and sentence translation. He advocates sentence translation, opposes word translation, and emphasizes "faithfully translating non-word words". In the third part, the author mainly discusses fluency, emphasizes the translator's responsibility to domestic readers, and advocates that the translator should write according to the psychology of China people. In the last part of the article, the fourth part, the author discusses the issue of beauty and pointedly points out that the beauty of the article lies not in quality, but in body. Therefore, when translating artistic articles, we must translate the charm of the author's demeanor and express our own views on the genre, that is, there are internal and external genres, so we should pay full attention to them when translating. At the end of the article, the author quoted Croce's viewpoint that translation is creation, and also expressed his attitude.
From Lin's translation thoughts, we can see that in the process of translation, translators should not only maintain their own language and culture, but also respect foreign "different" factors. The combination of these two attitudes is the basis for translators to achieve "faithful" translation. In the process of translation, Mr. Lin Yutang takes the original text as the center, goes with the flow, or translates literally, or freely, or adds notes, and flexibly uses various methods to deal with various contexts and contents.
Translation of Appellations in Six Chapters of a Floating Life
China is a big country. Due to the influence of feudal society, the Han nationality formed the extended family kinship system based on blood relationship, and the relationship between family members was complicated. Therefore, the number of appellations has also increased, and the semantics are clear. Among Zhao Yuanren's various appellations for China people, 1 14 kinship appellations are listed. In China Culture and Chinese-English Translation, Bao Huinan explained in detail the characteristics of the appellation system of China people, such as emphasizing seniority, gender and blood relationship. In western countries, the relationship between people is relatively simple and clear because of its simple structure and few members. Moreover, the west pays more attention to "people-oriented, name for use", and the title is relatively broad [4]. Cousin, for example, can refer to eight kinship words in Chinese, such as cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin. Seemingly simple appellations have different translations due to cultural differences between China and the West. When translating, the translator should look at the specific context and the specific translation. The following is a detailed appreciation of Lin Yutang's English version of Six Chapters of a Floating Life.
(1) If you choose a wife for your child, you won't marry a non-Shu girl. (P4)
If you choose a girl for me, I won't marry anyone except Cousin Su.
(2) Like Jade Tooth, Yunhe is more than ten months old. My brothers and sisters have called each other since I was a child, so I still call them Sister Shu. (P6)
Yun and I are the same age and ten months older than me. We have been used to calling her "Sister" and "Brother" since childhood, so I always call her "Sister Su".
(3) Suddenly, cousin Yu Heng let out a cry: "Sister Shu, come quickly!" (Page 8)
Yun's cousin Yu Heng shouted, "Sister Su, come quickly! "
(4) Now that I am glamorous, can my sister quit? (P 10)
Now my face is clean and smooth, and there are no acne marks. My dear sister, do you want to break fast?