A Report On The E-C Translation Of The Humanistic Tradition (Excerpts) From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

This report is based on the English-Chinese translation practice of The Humanistic Tradition(Excerpts),a set of classic textbooks on the humanities written by Gloria K.Fiero.Covering various aspects of culture worldwide,this series aims to explore the lineage of world civilization from a global perspective,and present the nature of"humanities" as an independent discipline.The translator chooses chapters on traditional Chinese culture as the source material for this translation report.The translation practice is guided by Skopos Theory which proposes that different translation strategies and methods can be adopted based on specific translation purposes to ensure an optimal target text According to Skopos Theory,there are three rules to obey in translation activities:the skopos rule,the coherence rule,and the fidelity rule.Typical cases at three levels are selected and reported:the lexical level,the syntactic level and the stylistic level.On the lexical level,the translator employs back translation,literal translation and conversion of part of speech to deal with culture-loaded expressions and nominal structures;on the syntactic level,passive voice is converted into active voice,and compound sentences are reorganized to ensure the readability of target text;on the stylistic level,by adjusting the caption of graphic illustration and tracing the sources of the quotations,the translator manages to make target text acceptable to Chinese readers while remaining faithful to source text.This translation practice is of certain value in two aspects.On one hand,Chinese translation of The Humanistic Tradition(Excerpts)offers Chinese readers a chance to reflect on our own cultural tradition from the perspective of others.On the other hand,this report,based on the combination of the Skopos Theory and translation practice,provides some new insights into the E-C translation of historical and cultural texts under the guidance of Skopos Theory,and offers references for future study on similar texts.