A Report On The Translation Of The Taoist Canon:A Historical Companion To The Daozang

This thesis is a report on the translation of part of the Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. The so-called "Taoist project" was originally initiated by Kristofer Schipper, a famous western sinologist. After about thirty years of painstaking research, the Taoist canon was finally completed and published in2004. As soon as the book was published, it has received great attention from both Chinese and western scholars, known as the millstone in the history of Taoism research. In order to push the domestic scholars to make further research, and at the same time, make Chinese scholars know better the native-born religion,"The Research and Translation of the Taoist Canon:A Historical Companion to the Daozang" was approved as a research project funded by the National Social Science foundation in2011, which is presided by Dr. Zhang Chongfu, a professor in Sichuan University. Recommended by her supervisor, the author of the present report had the honor to be a member of the translation group and translated part of the Taoist Canon:A Historical Companion to the Daozang. The translation involves a wide range of disciplines and much rigid requirements. In the process of the translation, the author, under the guidance of three principles of translation and the skopos theory, mainly adopted strategies of domestication and free translation and combined with such techniques as conversion, division and so on.There are four chapters in this report:The first chapter is an introduction to the translation project, including the background, specific translation tasks and requirements of the translation project. The second chapter deals with the background of the Taoist Canon:A Historical Companion to the Daozang, namely, its structure, characteristics and significance. The third chapter describes the difficulties the author encountered in the process of translation, and by means of the analysis of specific examples, the translation techniques the author adopted are illustrated in detail. The last chapter summarizes the author’s reflections on the translation practice and some suggestions to MTI teaching and MTI students are also put forward in this part.