Study of the Translation Strategies for the Chinese Culture-loaded Words in Chinese Classic Dance under Functional Equivalence Theory

Abstract

In the past century, Chinese classic dance has entered the spotlight of the international stage. Translation activities and researches on Chinese dance have been increasingly rising. The interdisciplinary study of the translation in Chinese dance field has practical significance and theoretical value for the expansion of the connotation of Chinese translation studies and the development of Chinese dance in the world. One of the features Chinese dance carried is that it involves abundant culture-loaded words. As a consequence, under the direction of functional equivalence theory proposed by Eugene Nida, this study is focused on the analysis of Chinese classic dance terminologies and cultural-loaded words, and the translation strategies of them. Afterwards, the study discovers that, first and foremost, when utilizing the functional equivalence theory, the target texts quality is better; second, translators will use several translation techniques for various categories of cultural-loaded terms in Chinese classical dance; third, several typical approaches that are used in this study with cultural connotations from Chinese classical dance are as follows: literal translation, free translation, annotation and substitution, among which literal translation and annotation are the most popular.