A Report On The E-C Translation Of Chapters 19 And 20 Of The Rise And Fall Of Ancient Egypt

This is a report on the translation of an excerpt from The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt.The original text is Chapter 19 and part of Chapter 20.The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt,written by the eminent British Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson,presents to the readers the vicissitude of ancient Egypt from its genesis to its final decline.This book is chosen as the original text of this E-C translation project because of its significance for learning the history and culture of ancient Egypt,but no Chinese translation is available yet.To translate the text,the translator first conducted preparations for the translation,including collecting books and papers on Egyptian history and culture and reading Chinese parallel texts in an attempt to have a better understanding of this ancient country and to ensure that the translation would be as faithful to the original as possible.Then she read papers and books about the theory of communicative translation proposed by Peter Newmark in order to flexibly use this theory as the guidance of this translation project.During the translation process,the translator often consulted dictionaries and online resources to guarantee a correct understanding of the original text.Under the guidance of the theory of communicative translation,the strategies of addition,conversion,and adaptation were used to deal with difficulties at the lexical level and turning phrases into clauses and reinventing sentence structures were used at the syntactic level in order to keep the translated version smooth and clear.Examples taken from the translated text are discussed and analyzed to illustrate the merit of the theory of communicative translation when it is applied to the translation of informative texts.Finally,the translator concludes this paper with a summary of the translation process,experience gained,and problems remaining to be solved.