Abstract:

As a famous Chinese novel by Wu Jingzi in Qing Dynasty, Ru Lin Wai Shi represents the peak of ancient Chinese satire literature, embedded with profound Chinese culture. However, such colorful cultural terms as place names, personal names, costumes, customs and imperial examination system may also serve as the obstacle of translating this novel. Due to cultural and linguistic differences, both denotative and connotative meanings are difficult for understanding and translation. This paper aims to study the translating process of cultural terms in Ru Lin Wai Shi from the perspective of functional equivalence theory, exploring the corresponding translation strategies.

Key words: Ru Lin Wai Shi; cultural terms; translation; functional equivalence

摘要：

《儒林外史》是中国清代作家吴敬梓的著名长篇小说，代表了中国古代讽刺文学的高峰，体现了博大精深的中国文化。然而，小说中丰富多样的文化词却又构成一道道译介障碍，比如地名、人名、服饰、习俗、科举制度等，由于中英语言与文化差异，除字面含义外，词汇的潜在涵义难以把握，翻译更有难度。本文旨在研究《儒林外史》中文化词的翻译过程，从功能对等理论的角度展开分析，探索相应翻译规律。

关键词：《儒林外史》；文化词；翻译；功能对等

1. Introduction
As a Chinese classic, Ru Lin Wai Shi wtitten by Wu Jingzi, with a vivid picture of the life of salt merchants, actors and prostitutes, is a famous novel which focuses on the intellectuals' life in the first half of the 18th century, when the imperial and feudal ethics were of great importance in their lives. In terms of the development of literary art, Ru Lin Wai Shi is the most prominently characteristic of “being a lengthy novel but similar to short stories in structure”, “castigating the errors of the times out of the unselfish motives”, and “sorrow with harmony, elegance with much staire in the art of irony”. Wu Jingzi, the author of Ru Lin Wai Shi, was born in a well-to-do family. Because of the poverty, his family moved to Nanjing, where he met and acquainted himself with many governmental officials. Those experiences had great influences on his novel. The only published English version of the original work, The Scholars, translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, the Chinese famous translator and his wife, helps foreign readers gradually get sketch of China at that time, leading to a stir in translating circle throughout the world and a great contribution to the communication of Chinese culture.