Translation Strategies of Character Appellations in Lin Yutang's English Version of Six Chapters of a Floating Life

Culture permeates language, and language carries culture. Appellation is a typical embodiment of language and an important carrier of culture. Lin Yutang's translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life takes domestication as the main translation strategy, supplemented by foreignization, and introduces China's appellation culture to western readers. When dealing with the translation of some appellations, Lin pays attention to the principle of fluency in the target language, which leads to the default of appellation culture in the source language, thus losing the opportunity to introduce China appellation culture to the target readers.

Keywords:: Lin Yutang's cultural default in the translation strategy of character appellation

1 Introduction

Appellation is the appellation in people's daily communication, and it is the product of long-term rules and long-term established habits in human society. It bears 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 the autobiography of Shen Fu 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 loves being the moon commented on me that my greatest strength is to tell foreigners about China culture, but to tell China people about foreign culture. This intention is not an insult to sneak attack. I thought the comments were true. " Lin Yutang thinks: "Yun is the most lovely woman in China literature." "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 couple in China." Six Chapters of a Floating Life is Lin Yutang's most skillful translation, 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 methods of cultural translation in his paper "On Translation Methods": "One method is to keep the author alive as long as possible and guide readers to get close to the author; Another way is to let readers live as long as possible and guide the author to get close to readers. " On this basis, Venuti called these two methods "foreignization" and "domestication" respectively in his book The Translator's Invisibility. Therefore, people put forward domestication and foreignization in translation strategies. 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 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, that is, the fourth part, the author discusses the issue of beauty and pointedly points out that the beauty of the article lies not in the quality but in the body. Therefore, when translating artistic articles, we must translate the charm of the author's demeanor and express our own views on genres, that is, there are internal and external genres, and we should pay full attention to them when translating. At the end of the article, the author quoted Croce's view 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, keeps up with the trend, or translates literally, freely or with annotations, and flexibly uses various methods to deal with various contexts and contents.

3 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 have become clear. Among the various appellations of China people in Zhao Yuanren, 1 14 kinship terms are listed. In his book China Culture and Chinese-English Translation, Bao Huinan explained in detail the characteristics of China's appellation system, 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-oriented", and the title is relatively broad [4]. For example, cousin can refer to eight kinship words in Chinese, such as cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin, cousin. Due to the cultural differences between China and the West, seemingly simple appellations have different translations. 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 translation of Six Chapters of a Floating Life.

(1) Choose a wife for your children and don't marry a non-Shu sister. (P4)

If you choose a girl for me, I won't marry anyone except Cousin Su.

(2) Yun and Yu's teeth are the same, and they have been more than ten months. My brothers and sisters have called each other since I was a child, so I still call them Sister Shu. (P6)

Yunhe is the same age as me 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 Yuheng called, "Sister Shu, come quickly!" (Page 8)

Yun's cousin Yu Heng called, "Sister Su, come quickly! "

(4) Now that I am glamorous, can my sister quit? （P 10）

Now my face is clean and smooth without acne marks. My dear sister, do you want to break fast?