Location: Home >> On the Problems and Strategies of Translating Vulgar Language in Chinese Folk Literature: A Case Study of Yu Hua’s Brothers
There are dramatic variations in eastern and western culture due to the differences of history, geography and other aspects. However, it is translation that makes the communication and sharing of the eastern and western culture become a possibility. The cultural differences between the East and the West, therefore, are a great challenge to the translation of all kinds of culture, which is also a focus of translation studies. Yu Hua’s Brothers is one of the most representative works of Chinese folk literature featured by its frequent use of vulgar language, which poses a great challenge to the translation of this book. This thesis firstly divides these vulgar languages into four different categories on account of their various characteristics and then deploys the relevant analysis of each category of the vulgar language, which are: (1) vulgar language related to slang words; (2) vulgar language related to taboo words; (3) vulgar language related to sexually explicit contents; (4) vulgar language related to other offensive contents. Then, a case study of the translation of Yu Hua’s Brothers is conducted, and accordingly, the evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of the translation version of Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas is deployed. Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas’s translation could be regarded as a successful one for they accurately translated the message conveyed in the source text and retained the original flavor to the maximum extent. However, there does exist some defects in their translation, for instance, in order to reach the highest level of the acceptability of the English readers of this book, the two translators had to give up some stylistic features of the original Chinese text. Nevertheless, the defects could never obscure the merits of their translation. At last, this thesis has summarized the strategies and techniques used by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas in translating vulgar language in Yu Hua’s Brothers, which could further help solve the problems of translating vulgar language in Chinese folk literature. Through the analysis as well as the summary of the strategies and techniques used in translating vulgar language in Yu Hua’s Brothers, some enlightenment about how to surmount all these cultural obstructions could be learned from Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas. Finally, the researchers and translators could obtain useful insights from this good example and then boost the internationalization of Chinese literary works and culture.
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Jiawei Tan. On the Problems and Strategies of Translating Vulgar Language in Chinese Folk Literature: A Case Study of Yu Hua’s Brothers. OA Journal of Education Research, 2023, 2(1), 5-11.
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