Attract men's attention without serious feelings for them ",these two translations will make foreign friends mistakenly think that Hua Dan is a sexy and frivolous role in western culture. This obviously goes against the cultural tradition of China. In China's traditional moral concept, women should abide by three obedience and four virtues, and even live at home. A little frivolous behavior will be accused of indecency. Therefore, both translations are unreasonable. At the same time, young women or maids in old China were generally around 20 years old, so it is very vague to use "male character" to translate their age range, which is mostly because the translator is not prepared for the cultural significance of the role.
4. A preliminary study on English translation of Peking Opera.
The four major businesses of Peking Opera represent different characters in China feudal society, including emperors and generals with calm personalities, Jianghu chivalrous men who live far away from temples, wives and concubines who are behind closed doors, and heroines who are bloody ... The characters are rich and varied, and the translation methods need to be flexibly selected according to the characteristics of the roles. Paper reference network 4. 1 Directly convey characters through literal translation and annotation. For the characters whose characters can be obtained from the source language, literal translation can be adopted first, and then appropriate additions and polishing can be made according to the needs of the characters, so that the characters can be completely conveyed. This not only keeps the original name consistent with the content, but also vivid and concise, and can reproduce the connotation of the original name. For example, Wu Sheng plays a young man who is good at martial arts in Beijing Opera, such as Zhao Yun in Chang Hanbo and Ma Chao in Zhan Jizhou. These characters are all good fighters, which convey the masculinity of ancient men in China. It can be literally translated as fighting, which means fighting in English, which is in line with the characteristics of Wushu students. At the same time, the translated names also express the gender and age characteristics of the characters. Because there are also images of "Wu Laosheng" and "Wu Dan" who know martial arts in Beijing Opera, people of different ages can be translated into junior male fights. Wu Laosheng can be translated into a senior male fighter. What needs to be pointed out here in Wu Dan is that many translations choose the word "soldier" when translating this role, which I think is inappropriate. The word "military" in English refers to military forces, including air force, navy and army, which did not conform to the actual situation of China society at that time, and it was interesting to exaggerate.
4.2 Free translation is used to express the characteristics of characters. This method is suitable for most of the characters in Sheng Xing and Danxing, because many characters in these two lines can't directly deduce the image characteristics of the characters from the source language, and they need to convey the cultural meaning through translation. If Danxing is "Tsing Yi", it is difficult for foreign friends who don't know Peking Opera culture to understand the meaning of its role through its name. At this time, free translation is needed to achieve the purpose of translation. "Tsing Yi" in Peking Opera mainly plays the image of dignified, quiet, generous and decent young and middle-aged women, mostly good wives, good mothers and fierce women, representing the beautiful image of traditional women in China, such as Luo Fu in Sang Huiyuan. Its name comes from the blue pleats it wears, and the literal translation is of little significance, so it is translated as' virtuous lady'. Virtue is an expression of its beautiful traditional morality, and a lady is a kind of honorific title for women, which also contains praise.
In free translation, we can also be faithful to the role itself and integrate cultural symbols equivalent to people. In western culture, you can find some characters corresponding to them, which are generally accepted by westerners. For example, in the old school of Wu Laosheng, there is a distinction between "making a living by the handle" and "making a living by the arrow". A martial artist can fight alone with all kinds of weapons, and a martial artist with an arrow can fight on horseback with archery. The two martial artists have their own characteristics, so the cultural symbols that integrate people can be translated into' old samurai' and' old cavalry', in which' samurai' is a warrior in old English and' cavalry' is a knight in old English.
4.3 Use the method of combining text and meaning. For some roles, if literal translation will make foreign friends feel confused and difficult to understand, then it is necessary to adopt the method of combining literal translation with free translation. Literal translation can convey the literal meaning of the original role name, while free translation can supplement the implied meaning of the original role name and reflect the cultural connotation of the role to the maximum extent. This method is mainly suitable for the translation of ugly lines, most of which are witty, humorous and optimistic people in Beijing opera. For this business, we can first translate it into "comedian" by literal translation. According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, "comedian" means "funny person", so it is appropriate to translate "ugly" into "ugly". At the same time, ugliness plays the role of working people, such as fishermen, farmers and bartenders. Free translation can be used to highlight this feature. For example, The Ugly Square Towel mainly plays a scholar who wears a square towel, such as Confucian scholars, scribes, counselors, scholars and other professions. This time is not suitable for literal translation, otherwise it will make people confused. Literati comedy can be used to express its literati image. Another example is "ugly tea clothes". Because the characters are poor and wear short washable blue jackets, they are called "tea clothes". Such people are generally in the lower class of society, and they have to sell their labor to do hard physical labor in order to make a living. For example, the literal translation of Xiao Weng in Qiu Jiang can be translated into a "laborious comedy" through connotative translation if it can't express the optimism that the characters can still enjoy themselves despite being exploited.
4.4 Use transliteration and interpretation to express people.