Postcolonial Interpretation of Chinese Rice Culture in E-C Translation: A Comparative Analysis Based on Culture-Loaded Words and Discourse Structure (Taking "Rice Fragrance Across Fields" (Episode 2, Season 4 of Flavorful World) as a case)

Abstract

This study employs postcolonial theory and qualitative text analysis to examine the English-dubbed version of ‘Rice Fragrance Across Fields’ (Episode 2, Season 4 of Flavorful World) on YouTube. It focuses on six categories of culture-loaded words, namely religious ritual-related, farming practice-related, food product-related, craftsmanship & technology-related, and rhetorical image-related words, to explore the discourse construction and power relations of Chinese rice culture in English-Chinese translation. By establishing a corpus of the original Chinese text and its English translation, the study analyzes the semantic impacts of four translation strategies including domestication and foreignization. Combining Homi Bhabha's Hybridity Theory, it compares the loss of cultural connotations and the representation of "othering". The study reveals a widespread loss of cultural connotations in the English translation of specialized terms related to rice culture, with religious ritual-related and rhetorical imagery-related vocabulary exhibiting the lowest integrity of meaning (average integrity rates of 42.7% and 38.5%, respectively). A comparative analysis of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean translations reveals that the proportion of cultural background supplementation in Chinese translations (8%) is significantly lower than in Japanese (42%) and Korean (38%), indicating a marginalization trend within Western contexts.