An E-C Translation Report On Mountain Of Fame:Portraits In Chinese History(Chapter Four)

As the first biographical history book in Chinese history,Shi ji has a strong influence,so that all dynasties after the Han Dynasty adopted this way of recording history.These documents have become essential materials for western scholars to have a good understanding of Chinese history and culture.Among these materials,Shi ji is popular among many scholars,and they carry out research on the background,contents,and its author of Shi ji,trying to get the whole picture of the landmark book.The significance of translation of materials of this kind is to understand the appearance of Chinese history from the western perspectives.Yet,the fact is that there are few translations of this kind of document,and the application of translation strategies for this kind of text is also rare.This report is on the E-C translation of chapter four,Sima Qian,from Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History with the guide of Eco-translatology.With the theory,it analyzes the adaptation and selection of specific strategies for historical texts under linguistic,cultural,and communicative dimension,aiming to providing appropriate methods for the translation of historical text to other translators.Through translation practice,the study shows that elementary theory,“three-dimensional transformations”,of Eco-translatology is suitable for the translation of historical texts and it can well convey the text information,cultural connotation and the author’s communicative purpose contained in a historical text.At the same time,the translation of historical texts has more strict requirements on the translator,who needs to have adequate understanding of classical Chinese,modern Chinese and English,gain proficiency in the application of both English and Chinese,and have sufficient understanding of the background knowledge of the quoted content form original documents in classical Chinese,so as to perform a translation of historical texts.