A Report On The C-E Translation Of The Spirit Of Chinese History (Excerpt) From The Perspective Of The Text Typology Theory

Based on Buhler’s division of the language function,Reiss divides text type into informative text,expressive text and operative text.Informative text is content-oriented and manages to deliver information and knowledge.To translate informative texts,the translators should put emphasis on the delivery of accurate content.The Spirit of Chinese History is compiled from a series of lectures by Qian Mu.Focusing on Chinese history,the speeches deal with seven major themes: historical spirits and methods,politics,economy,national defense,education,geography and characters,and moral spirits,providing readers with an in-depth introduction to Chinese history and culture,playing a significant role in building cultural confidence.The main function of the text is informative function.Therefore,the source text is an informative text.The translation report takes the English translation of the second and fifth chapters of The Spirit of Chinese History as the object of study.Under the guidance of Reiss’ s text typology theory,the report works to analyze translation difficulties and put forward corresponding solutions from three aspects: lexical,syntactic,and rhetorical.The lexical level focuses on the translation of culture-loaded words and polysemy;the syntactic level focuses on the translation of run-on sentences and classical Chinese;the rhetorical level focuses on the translation of parallelism and metaphor.Through case studies,the translation strategies and methods used for each translation difficulty are examined so that the translation meets the features of an informative text as far as possible,ensuring that the critical information is conveyed while the language presents to be clear and concise.To cope with translation difficulties above,the translator uses some translation methods and techniques: at the lexical level,literal translation,transliteration plus annotation and paraphrase are adopted;at the syntactic level,combination,conversion of part of speech,division and reconstruction are adopted;and at the rhetorical level,omission,combination and paraphrase are adopted.This translation report hopes to provide a reference for the translation practice of informative texts.