Translation Of Historical Texts Under "Three-dimensional Transformations":A Report On The Translation Of An Excerpt From Fifty Years In Amoy Or A History Of The Amoy Mission,China

Since modern times,foreign missionaries have attracted increasing attention from historians because of the complexity of their impact on China.To know the missionary history written by foreign missionaries is conducive to a comprehensive and objective understanding of the Sino-Western cultural exchanges.At the same time,it is of great historical value for the investigation of the social development of China at that time,especially of the local conditions of Xiamen in modern times.However,a historical text,one of the informative texts with the literary feature,has posed a great challenge to translators in how to maintain its authenticity and narrativity while not losing its literary and aesthetic flavor.The source text chosen for this report is an excerpt of Fifty Years in Amoy or A History of the Amoy Mission,China,dealing with some historical records about the missionary history in Amoy in fifty years and the life experience of some important missionaries.Discussing the translation of the historical text through the typical examples demonstrates that under the guidance of adaptive selection of the "three-dimensional transformations",the narrativity,authenticity and literariness of historical texts can be best maintained.In terms of "adaptive selection in the linguistic dimension",the translator makes transformation in linguistic expression to display its narrative style.When it comes to the "cultural dimension",annotations or footnotes are supplied to correct the false cultural information or transmit the cultural default.While dealing with the "communicative dimension",the translator pays attention to the author’s writing intention and applies Chinese four-character phrases,well-chosen diction and amplification in accordance with the context to enhance the literariness.It has been found that the "three-dimensional transformations" under Eco-translatology can effectively guide the translation of historical texts,which helps impart objective historical knowledge to the target text readers and,in the meantime,these translation skills are applicable to the translation of similar historical texts.