Strategies For C-E Translation Of The Three-Character Classic

The Three-Character Classic, the traditional primer for teaching children to read in ancient China, is a well-known book to the Chinese-speaking communities for well over seven hundred years. With three Chinese characters in each line and one thousand and sixty-eight characters all told, the book covers a wide range of knowledge, not only the basic knowledge on education, ethics, astronomy, history and geography, but also the knowledge on the Confucian classics and well-known historical figures, which makes it a virtual encyclopedia for children. The Three-Character Classic has been translated into different languages since the 17th century and has become an important material for foreigners to learn the Chinese language and culture. The study on the translation strategies adopted by the translators of the English translation to establish equivalence will contribute to the practice of translation of the Chinese classics, as this elementary textbook is one of the Chinese classics, and to the further dissemination of the Chinese culture.The thesis makes a study on the foreignization and domestication strategies that are reflected in the English translation of the Three-Character Classic in order to probe into the way in which these strategies exert influence on the transmission of source language culture and the establishment of equivalence in the target language text. The thesis takes Nida's equivalence theory as the theoretical foundation and discusses various aspects of culture, language and translation, and their interrelationship. At the same time, analysis is made on the translators'purpose to do the translation and on the major problems of the English translation. To wrap up, some suggestions to solve these problems are given with the hope of making a modest contribution to the translation of the Chinese classics. The author of the thesis suggests that the translators of the Chinese classics should adopt foreignization and domestication as a complementary pair of strategies during the translation and take the translation purpose and the readers'acceptability into consideration.