A Report On E-C Translation Of "Legalism In Chinese Philosophy"

This report,choosing the translation of characteristic words and sentences in“Legalism in Chinese philosophy” as research object,linking theory with practice and analyzing the process of translation,endeavors to explore the applicability of transliteration,bank translation strategy,conversion,linear translation,inversion and division under the guidance of Skopos theory,hoping to provide beneficial reference for the research and practice of English-Chinese translation of philosophical texts.The selected translation material “Legalism in Chinese philosophy” is a paper of the sinologist professor Yuri Pines published in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.The paper is accomplished in English with approximate 13,000 words and has not yet rendered into Chinese.From the perspective of a foreign scholor,the thought of legalists in Chinese philosophy was studied.The paper not only describes the social roots,historical background,philosophical foundations,representative figures,classics in terms of the coming into being of Legalism,but also gains the conclusion that developing evolutionary view of history,human nature of likes and dislikes,attaching great importance to agriculture and restraining commerce,centralized and autocratic monarchy,exclusion of rites and supressing subjects with severe law are the main ideas of legalists.The original text has its own characteristics both in vocabulary and in sentence pattern.Firstly,in terms of vocabulary,there are many proper nouns,cultural words with Chinese characteristics and nouns with verb meaning in the original text.Secondly,in terms of sentence pattern,there are a large number of objective passive sentences,attributive clauses with various modifiers,long sentences with complex grammatical structure and many literature of Legalist school cited by sinologists.Acording to the characteristics of original text,the author decides to use Vermeer's Skopos theory to guide this translation practice.The theory holds that translation is an intentional,purposeful behavior based on an original text.In addition,Vermeer also put forward three rules guiding the translator's decision,namely the skopos rule,the coherence rule and the fidelity rule.Among the three rules,the skopos rule occupies the first place,and the other two rules should be subordinated to the skopos rule.The report consists of four parts: the first part is the description of the translation task,including the source of the original text,a brief introduction to the original text and the significance of the translation project;the second part is about the process of translation,including pre-translation preparation,analysis and modification of the first translation,modification of the second translation,and retouching of the final translation;the third part is the analysis of some cases.In this part,the author selects 25 examples with certain difficulty and characteristics from the translation materials,and makes a detailed analysis of the examples from the perspective of vocabulary translation and sentence translation;and the last part is the summary which mainly includes the summary of experience gained in this translation practice and the enlightenment to the author's future work.