摘要:The global village is now becoming smaller and smaller, and people on the earth long for knowing more about each other’s culture. Concededly, literary translation is the most widely accepted means to promote cultural communication between the East and the West.
always associate the name of the Mississippi River with their history. The river reminds them of its close connection with the blood and tears of the black people and even of Mark Twain. Nevertheless, Chinese people will never get the same feeling for hearing the Mississippi.
Regional segregation and different living environment have resulted in different cultures. So people’s cognition and analogy of the nature are different. And the cultural connotation of words and things differs from one culture to another. This leads to another barrier in literary translation. For example, Shelly’s poem“Ode to the West Wind”, Chinese people will feel puzzled when they read the poem. For Chinese people, “west wind” refers to the wind of autumn suggesting something declining,or something miserable. Owing to the different geographic positions, China is located in the Eastern Hemisphere and has the monsoon climate but England lies in the Western Hemisphere and belongs to the oceanic climate, “west wind” in English hasn’t the same denotation and connotation as it in Chinese.
England is an island country. It has long coastlines with many good gulfs, which is greatly suitable for fishery and navigation. Therefore, navigation has a very important place in British economy ever since the ancient times. This special geographic location has brought about many words and expressions which have much to do with fishery and navigation, like “all at sea 无主意、be in the same boat 与……共患难、sink or swim 孤注一掷、have other fish to fry 另有他图、etc.
However, China is an agricultural country, so many proverbs, idioms and expressions refer to agriculture, like “守株待兔、揠苗助长、世外桃源、桃李满天下、etc”. The connotative meaning of words and phrases sometimes can be totally different because of different geographic positions , a cultural barrier which every translator may encounter in his translation work.
3.3 Cultrual Difference Due to Different Religious Beliefs
Religion is a very important part in culture. To a certain extent, its history and development are longer than some words. There are a large nunber of words and expressions derived from reiligious activities. Therefore, the impact of religion upon langague is extremely prominent and thus cannot be neglected.
As we know that there are a lot of religious beliefs in the world, such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism and so forth. And each religion has its own cultural characteristics. Different religion are related with different forms of culture. In western countries, Christianity had been the mainstream of religion for more than two thousand
years. The Bible tells that the God, who is omnipotent, creates the whole world. But to Chinese, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism influence them more.
Example 1:
Would any of the stock of Barrabbas
Had been her husband rather than a Christian!
(Shakesprare, The Merchant of Venice)
What is “Barrabbas”? Chinese reader who never reads The Bible or heards of the story from The Bible, it is impossible to get the message of the original. While most English speaking people know the
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