浅谈文化差异对英语明喻汉译的影响(2)
His definition to the Minimal Equivalence is “The translation and the original are equivalent to such an extent that the translation would arouse in the audience or readers of the target 1anguage nearly the same feeling and response as the original would in those of me source language.’’(Nida 65) However, Nida admits that such a high level of equivalence in translation can never be reached. It is especially so when the cultures and aesthetic values of the two languages are considerably different. The Maximal Equivalence, he thinks, is“Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor 1anguage the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first m terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.”(Nida 67)
Culture, as a special model restricted to social groups, is a norm handbook for all the members in society and a standard for social activities. With the development of transportation, communication among nations becomes more universal and the differences of their cultures influence each other. Language as an intermediary of intercultural interaction has a large number of set phrases, idioms, proverbs, slangs and so on.These all hold rich culture information, including its characteristics and backgrounds, and the vivid image used in similes with national characteristics and local colors. They reflect the long-history humanity situation from every aspect of a nation. Many idioms use similes to show us the culture information.When those who want to understand or use a simile in another language, they should first have knowledge of culture differences. Culture background is an important factor in doing English-Chinese simile translation.
II. Culture and Simile
2 .1 Definition and Characteristics of Culture
Our society is, actually, quite a complicated cultural system. Those who are capable of investigating on cultures must have a profound and professional knowledge. Tylor points out that culture is a complex matter, including knowledge, belief, art, custom, and the other capabilities acquired by people as a member of society. Tylor lays particular stress on the spirit and conception patters of culture’s definition. As the outgrowth of interaction in social practice, culture has a broad sense and a narrow sense. The broad sense means the sum wealth of material and spirit created in the course of human social practice. It includes material culture, institutional culture and psychological culture. The narrow sense refers to human social psychological culture. It’s the memory system and conveys the information, as well as the subjective factors that cultivated in social practice and conscious activities. It’s the core of culture that embraces political theory, right conception, philosophy, science, art, religion and the forth. Cultural conceptions have a great influence on a person’s value and behaviors.
As every substance in the world, culture also has its own characteristics. Its general characters come from the shared nature, so human has a similar knowledge about it. These characters are social-attribute, historical-attribute, epochal attribute and nation attribute (Jiang 50). Comparatively speaking, for nature, culture is a social phenomenon. On one hand, it’s the product produced by human’ creativities. Let’s take shells for example: man can carve on them and process them into colorful decorations. On the other hand, culture plays a vital role in standardizing humans’ behaviors. They will learn how to conduct in some society. Social-attribute certainly affects one’s habits of language use.
Culture is the deposit of history. Every generation will inherit the original culture while they absorb the quintessence and abandon the waste (Jiang 50). For instance, it’s a custom for western brides to wear white dress to show their holiness and purity. Nowadays, this is also accepted by Chinese youth. Learning different customs makes one understand others well.
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