Translation Analysis Of Kinship Terms In Han Shu From The Perspective Of Sociosemiotic Approach To Translation

Han Shu,written by the historian Ban Gu in the Eastern Han Dynasty,is the first dynastic history of ancient China after Shi Ji as well as one of the Twenty-Four Histories.The English translation of Chinese historical classics plays a vital role in the spread of Chinese culture.Term translation is one of the difficulties and a great challenge in the translation of Chinese classics.Therefore,the study of term translation is of great importance to the quality of translation of classics as well as the promotion of Chinese culture to the rest of the world.There are plentiful kinship terms in Han Shu.As an important part of social history and culture,kinship terms reflect the features of many aspects of a nation’s culture,such as social system,family structure,marriage system,etc.Within the theoretical framework of sociosemiotic approach to translation studies,the thesis analyzes the translations of kinship terms in the two English versions of Han Shu,one by Burton Watson and the other by Homer H.Dubs.It aims to investigate the transfer of designative meaning and pragmatic meaning in accordance with the classification of meanings by Charles Morris as well as the representation of informative function,expressive function and phatic function within the classification framework of language functions by Peter Newmark during the translation process.Furthermore,the thesis attempts to explore the reasons why there are some non-equivalence and incomplete equivalence in terms of meaning and function.The research finds that the two translators adopted many translation strategies to transfer the meanings and represent the functions of the original kinship terms,although some losses can still be observed.The research also shows that the theory of sociosemiotic approach to translation has valuable implications for the translation of kinship terms.And the thesis also provides a relatively new perspective for theoretical research of kinship term translation studies and a reliable reference case for translation practice in this field.