Translating Cultural Words from English to Chinese: A Case Study of Zhang Guruo's Translation of Thomas Hardy's Three Novels

This study is located under the product-oriented sub-branch within the framework of descriptive translation studies, which adopts a culturally oriented approach to explore translation strategies surrounding Cultural Words (CWs) from English to Chinese. It is based on the comparison of Zhang Guruo and other translators’ translations of Thomas Hardy’s three novels, namely, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and The Return of the Native. The main objective of this study is to evaluate and compare Zhang Guruo’s translations with those of other translators so as to build a refined model of translation strategies for CWs.

This thesis includes eight chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, which introduces the relationship between culture and translation, CWs and the background of Zhang Guruo and Thomas Hardy. The second chapter is the literature review and methodology. Based on previous research, a cultural model and a model of translation strategies are built in order to assist in evaluating Zhang Guruo and the other translators’ work. Chapter Three to Chapter Seven are the analysis of CWs oriented in five different cultural strata, i.e., ecological stratum, material stratum, institutional stratum, customary and behavioural stratum and mental stratum. In these five chapters, 17 categories of CWs have been examined to find out the features of Zhang Guruo’s translation strategies and build a modified model of translating CWs.

In the conclusion, the main findings can be concluded into the following principal aspects: the perspective on Zhang Guruo’s translation features in comparison with other translators and the perspective on the general features of translating CWs with cultural and language change deduced from the research.