A Report On The Translation Of The Story Of Jigong(Excerpt)

With the development of globalization,cultural exchanges between countries are becoming increasingly frequent.Being rich in culture,literary works have always played a crucial role in the process of promoting the communication and exchanges of culture.And the translation of literary works has also played an important part in this process.This translation report is conducted on the basis of the novel—The Story of Jigong written by the writer Guo Xiaoting in the Qing Dynasty.The novel mainly tells the story of Jigong’s punishing the evil and rewarding the good,helping those in danger and relieving those in need during the course of roaming across China,of which several chapters are chosen as the translation text(chapter 1,the chapter 39 and chapter 40).The translator focuses on the English translation of culture-loaded words and summarizes corresponding translation methods guided by Nida’s Theory of Functional Equivalence.Nida classified culture into culture social culture,material culture,religious culture,ecological culture and linguistic culture.The translator finds that the text is heavily loaded with culture-loaded words while reading and studying the source text carefully.A correct understanding of these culture-loaded words is the biggest difficulty facing the translator in the process of reading the text.The first difficulty is to translate some ancient Chinese words accurately which are seldom or no longer used now with the development of the times and the progress of the society,such as the word“过卖”.The translator needs to find words in the modern Chinese language which are close to those ancient words in meaning to translate them in order to promote the meaning equivalence and make it easier for readers to understand.The second difficulty is to employ free translation or transliteration to translate some ancient specialized terms in some fields by referring to a large number of books so that readers of the target language can have a better understanding,for there are no corresponding English words for them.The third difficulty is to translate some poems and proverbs.Free translation is mainly used to interpret and translate them.Understanding the source text is the key to translation.Only having a good understanding of the source text can we perform effective translation.On the basis of referring to the relevant materials and having a deep and full understanding of every culture-loaded word,the translator adopts the methods of literal translation,free translation,transliteration with explanation and addition translation in consistent with Nida’s Theory of Functional Equivalence,of which free translation is used at most.It can be concluded that fee translation is a very effective translation method which can transmit the information of the source text and spread Chinese culture.Flexible translation methods should be used according to the actual specific circumstances to give an accurate expression of the information of the source text and ensure foreign readers to know about Chinese culture.