中国典籍英译中文化专有项的翻译策略研究——以《晏子春秋》为例

A Study on the Translation Strategies of Culture-Specific Items in the English Translation of Chinese Classics: Taking Spring and Autumn Annals of Yanzi as an Example

Culture-specific items are unique cultural features of a particular language or cultural group, whose distinctive connotations and functions present significant challenges in translation. Spring and Autumn Annals of Yanzi, as an important Qi cultural classic, contains numerous culture-specific items. This paper explores the strategies for translating these culture-specific items in the English translation of Spring and Autumn Annals of Yanzi. The study categorizes the culture-specific items and, based on Aixelá's framework for translating culturespecific items, analyzes the strategy choices made during the translation process, including transliteration, language translation, intratextual/extratextual explanation, assimilation, deletion, and other methods. The findings reveal that different culture-specific items often require a combination of multiple translation strategies to achieve “cultural fidelity”, that is, to retain as much of the source culture's uniqueness as possible in the translation. This paper provides significant theoretical insights for the translation practice of Chinese classics, emphasizing the necessity of maintaining cultural distinctiveness in cross-cultural translation.

文化专有项是特定语言或文化群体独有的文化特征，其独特的内涵和功能使其在翻译中成为一大难点，《晏子春秋》作为齐文化的重要典籍，包含了大量文化专有项。本文探讨了在中国典籍《晏子春秋》中涉及的文化专有项的英译策略，对《晏子春秋》中的文化专有项进行分类，并基于艾克西拉的文化专有项翻译策略框架，分析了其英译过程中的策略选择，包括音译、语言翻译、文内/文外解释、同化、删除等多种方法。研究结果表明，不同的文化专有项往往需要组合使用多种翻译策略，以实现“文化传真”，即在译文中尽可能保留源语文化的独特性。本文对中国典籍的翻译实践提供了重要的理论借鉴，强调了在跨文化翻译中保持文化特色的必要性