A Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of The Culture-Loaded Words In Archaeological Document From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

The continuous rise of the earth’s temperature has caused dramatic changes in the Arctic region.The Arctic issue has involved the overall interests of the international community and the common destiny of the whole mankind.And the research on the Arctic has therefore increasingly attracted the attention from domestic and foreign academic scholars.The source text for this translation practice is selected with an aim to test the applicability of the functional equivalence theory of translation when archaeological document is translated and also an attempt to provide proper translation methods for the translation of this kind of texts.The source text for this translation practice is a chapter from the book A Prehistory of the North written by John F.Hoffecker,a researcher at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado in the United States.This book comprehensively describes how human beings settled in the colder places on the earth in a long period of two million years.Over the past ten thousand years,they have accumulated transcendental survival wisdom to adapt to nature,have created unique Arctic ethnic culture,and have formed an Arctic ethnic ecology to adapt to the cold environment.It is of great significance to the utilization of the cold zone and the study of human survival wisdom from the perspective of anthropology.This translation practice report mainly focuses on the study of translating culture-loaded words in the archaeological document.Guided by the functional equivalence theory of translation advanced by Eugene A.Nida,this report chooses the first three chapters of the book for the translation practice and the following case analysis.The author of the report finds that words for ecology reflect the natural environment,landform and climate of the Arctic region,and most of them are suitable for transliteration,which can reproduce the information of the source language in appropriate and fluent target language.Words for material culture are the products of people’s daily life and production activities.They suggest contemporary life and have their own unique uses.Free translation is applicable to the translation of these words,which can reproduce the concept consistent with the target readers’ cognition and reduce the cultural differences.Words for social culture are closely related to the social development in a specific historical period,involving all aspects of human life,with unique ethnic and oral characteristics,and transliteration and free translation are applicable to the translation of these words,which can avoid target language readers’ misunderstanding of the source text information.Words for linguistic culture are related to the language habits.Most of them can be translated by following the principle of domestication or using free translation by attending to the role of the target language readers,by which unnatural word-by-word translation of the source text can be avoided so as to achieve functional equivalence.