Faithfulness, Smoothness and Beauty: Lin Yutang’s Translation of Culture-Loaded Words in
Six Chapters of a Floating Life
Six Chapters of a Floating Life, an autobiographical prose work completed by Shen Fu in the early19th century, is rich in culture-loaded words. This article examines Lin Yutang’s English translation of these words from material, ecological, social, religious, and linguistic contexts against his own principles of faithfulness, smoothness and beauty. It shows that concise explanation works best when meaning is grounded in a visible object, image, or action. Honorifics, ritual beliefs, and classical allusions are harder to accommodate because they depend on knowledge beyond the sentence. Lin protects narrative flow by generalizing such expressions, though historical distinctions and associations may recede. Beauty emerges when a source image remains suggestive in English or when another phrase restores comparable force. Overall, smoothness determines how much detail is retained. These observations concern the sample and wording; they do not measure the translation as a whole or readers’ responses.
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