A Comparative Analysis Of English Translation Excerpts Of Tian Gong Kai Wu

With a proud history of over 5000 years,the ancient civilization of China sports rich cultural relics and intangible cultural heritages.Among them,classics diving into the subject of ancient technology presented ancient Chinese wisdom and the brilliance of our achievements in the field.However,China’s contributions to the general progress of science and technology have been disappointingly underrated worldwide.One explanation for that is the insufficiency of translation work by Chinese scholars on relevant classics.Thus,it is self-evident that Chinese translators should ramp up efforts to improve the quantity and quality of translations on sci-tech classics,to meet the growing needs of Chinese culture going abroad.Tian Gong Kai Wu,an integrated work on agriculture and handicrafts and one of the most significant works on science and technology in the history of China,stands out as an eligible subject for research.It was successively translated into English by scholars including Li Qiaoping,E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-Chuan Sun,and a trio of English professors in Chinese universities from the year of 1948 to 2011.In 1966,the first full English translation of Tian Gong Kai Wu by an American Chinese couple,E-tu Zen Sun and Shiou-Chuan Sun came out to critical acclaim in the English-speaking world.In 2011,as part of the national cultural and publishing project named "the Library of Chinese Classics" that translated over 110 Chinese classics into English and promoted them to the rest of the world,the latest English translation of Tian Gong Kai Wu,by a trio of English professors,Wang Haiyan,Wang Yijing,and Liu Yingchun,was published and included into the collections of famed university libraries such as Harvard-Yenching Library.An analytical comparison of the latest English translation by Chinese translators with critically acclaimed version by English native speakers helps us to determine the necessity of retranslation,and enlightens us on how to overcome possible challenges in the process of retranslation through critically reflective thinking.In this paper,the analytical comparison is carried out on the translations of parts of the two chapters Clothing Materials(《乃服篇》)and Dyes(《彰施篇》)from Tian Gong Kai Wu,excerpted from Zen’s translation(1966)and Wang’s translation(2011).Judging from the accuracy,coherence of the said translations and their fidelity to linguistic features and writing style of technical texts,the paper compares them in an all-round way in terms of their word choice,syntactical and textual features,and translation strategies,analyzes the causes of their differences,confirms the necessity of retranslation for cultural promotion,and puts forward some thinking for improving the quality of retranslation.