Arts Studies and Criticism

Culture-loaded words are words, phrases and idioms that signify things unique to a certain culture, and these terms reflect the unique ways of activity of a particular people that have been gradually accumulated over a long period of history and that are different from those of other peoples. Domestication and foreignization are two different translation strategies; domestication is to get as close as possible to the reader and the target language culture, while foreignization is to get as close as possible to the author and the source language culture. This paper analyses the culture-loaded words in Mo Yan's literary work Frog from the perspectives of foreignization and domestication, and explores the translation strategies and reasons behind the choice. In this thesis, the culture-loaded words in Frog are analyzed and discussed separately according to Nida's classification of culture, including religious, linguistic, social and material culture-loaded words. It is found that translators flexibly use foreignization and domestication when dealing with different culture-loaded words, with foreignization as the majority and domestication as the minority. Through the study on the translation of culture-loaded words, this paper explores deeply the way in which the translator of Frog presents Chinese culture to the world, providing a powerful reference for the translation of other Chinese local literature, and offering new ideas for the transmission of Chinese culture.