Translation Report Of Black Athena (Chapter7, Volume Ⅱ)

This paper stands as a translation report of Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic Roots of ClassicalCivilization (Volume II), a brilliant cultural and academic masterpiece by Martin Bernal. InBlack Athena, Mr. Bernal, citing strong and solid evidence across various disciplinesincluding archaeology, linguistics, mythology, philosophy, geology and academic history,disputes the mainstream convention of a Europe-rooted classical civilization. Rather thanoriginating from Greece, the western civilization, Mr. Bernal points out in his book,developed from ancient civilizations of Egypt in North Africa and Phoenicia in West Asia.When translating Chapter Seven, the author of this paper, guided by Skopos theory, analyzesthe target text at the lexical and syntactical dimensions, which are further mirrored in thisreport. Lexically speaking, different translation techniques of specific conjunctions andprepositions are studied in detail. Tentative attempts are also made at the syntactic level tosummarize the viable methods for rendering discontinuous and multiple modifications, andcomplex and compound sentences.This report falls into four chapters, with background, objective and significance of thetranslation initiative as well as structure of this report introduced in Chapter One. ChapterTwo outlines a brief picture of Black Athena and presents an elaboration of the adoptedtranslation theory. In discussions of Chapter Three, the focus shifts to specific translationdifficulties and problems encountered and corresponding coping strategies as recommendedby the guiding translation theory. Translation experience gained from this endeavor iscrystallized in the concluding chapter and areas in need of improvement in future translationare covered.