A Study On The Classification And English Translation Of Ancient Chinese Navigational Terms

As a mirror of navigational culture, ancient Chinese navigational literature covers the navigational areas, tools, science and technology and administration of marine navigation in each historical period, including plenty of navigational terms. These terms are imbued with abundant information on navigational science and technology, becoming a significant component of scientific and technical term. However, traditional studies on scientific and technical term intend to focus on English-Chinese translation. In such situation, Chinese-English translation of ancient navigational terms appears more important, which meets the needs of technical exchanges between China and foreign countries and the transmission of ancient Chinese scientific and technical information in the navigational field to the outside world.Terms on navigational tools, navigational science and technology and administration of marine navigation are selected as the research subject. Firstly, from the perspective of terminological studies by Feng Zhiwei, the above three categories of terms are further classified. Then, based on previous studies, the author proposes four translation principles to be followed:accuracy, conciseness, professionalism and unification. Lastly, qualitative and quantitative methods are combined to explore the characteristics of each category of terms and translation strategies employed.This thesis reaches three major conclusions. Firstly, ancient Chinese navigational terms are characterized by professionalism and conciseness. Secondly, translation principles, namely accuracy, conciseness, professionalism and unification principles should be applied flexibly rather than limit the translation to one of them. Thirdly, literal translation, free translation and image translation are mainly adopted strategies. Terms with clear meaning and English correspondences are translated with literal translation strategy; free translation strategy is employed for terms with implicated meanings; for terms with vivid names, image translation is adopted to portray the vivid image of the original terms for the readers.