A Report On C-E Translation Of Illustrated History Of Textile Technology In Ancient China (Chapter Eight)

The history of ancient Chinese looms is an essential part of ancient Chinese textile technology history.Among ancient Chinese looms,the harness-treadle loom has been in use for the longest time with the largest number of developed forms,which plays a significant role in the history of loom development.The source text for this Chinese-to-English translation practice is Chapter 8 “The Origin and Development of Harness-Treadle Loom” in Illustrated History of Textile Technology in Ancient China.In this chapter,the authors describe the information about harness-treadle looms in ancient Chinese literature and artworks to represent the detailed process of the origin and development of harness-treadle looms.It is highly expected that this translation practice can make contributions to the international dissemination of the history and culture of ancient Chinese textile technology,facilitating the international exchange and cooperation of modern Chinese textile technology.The source text is a popular scientific text introducing ancient Chinese textile technology history,including a large amount of loom terms,interdisciplinary vocabulary,non-subject sentences,run-on sentences,complex sentences,and other textual information.In this translation practice,the translator aims to accurately and effectively convey the information to target text readers.Under the guidance of Newmark’s communicative translation theory,the translator ensures accuracy in translation at lexical and syntactic levels as well as focuses on acceptance effect of target text readers.Additionally,since there is no corresponding expression in English for culture-loaded words,ancient poetry and classics,as well as historical information in the source text,the translator adopts Newmark’s semantic translation theory as the principle for translating this part.Linguistic characteristics of the source language are preserved and readability of the source language is enhanced.Lastly,a termbase related to ancient Chinese looms is established in this practice.It is expected to provide reference for subsequent translations of loom-related texts.