A Report On The E-C Translation Of Traces Of The Sage:Monument,Materiality,and The First Temple Of Confucius (Excerpt)

This report is based on the practice of English-Chinese translation.The source text is derived from the sixth and seventh chapters of the book Traces of The Sage: Monument,Materiality,and the First Temple of Confucius which was published by the University of California Press with English words amounting to 12,804.The book,written by Professor James A.Flath of Western University in Canada,provides a complete overview of the Kong Temple’s history and material culture,as well as descriptions of changes in ritual life over time and the Kong Temple’s fate in modern and contemporary times.Chapter six accounts for the tourist discovery of Qufu from the republican period to modern times,and demonstrates the controversies over the commercialization of Kong Temple and constant struggles over the managerial entity.The last chapter shows the transformative power of heritage for economic,cultural and political use.The book is classified as the historical text and it contains a great number of nouns,such as economic,political,and architectural terminology,as well as nouns of abstract and non-specific concepts.Secondly,the source text includes a large number of long and difficult sentences as well as passive sentences.The difficulties of this translation program mainly lie in the access to a large number of terms,the understanding of abstract nouns combined with context,and how to deal with long and complex sentences and passive sentences.The translator analyzes and explores the use of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory in translation practice by integrating it with the linguistic features and challenges of the source text.According to Catford,level shifts and category shifts are included in the theory;level shifts are primarily something expressed by grammar in one language and lexis in another;category shifts include structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts,and intra-system shifts.The study explains the guiding role of Translation Shifts Theory for historical texts from the perspective of level shifts and category shifts,and explores the theory’s feasibility in translation practice with case studies.By analyzing the examples,the author discovers that the idea of “shifts” is helpful to enhance the fluency and readability of the translation.Besides,the theory provides practical translation strategies for dealing with shifts of passive voices,parts of speech and sentence structures in the text.The author has gained a better awareness of distinctions between the Chinese and English languages as a result of writing this report.Based on the differences,different shifts strategies are applied in the translation.This report has summarized limitations and experience in the translation project to serve as enlightenment for future translation practice.And it has also provided some reference for the translation of historical texts and the application of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory.