On Back-translation Of Chinese Culture-specific Items In Chinese Leaders’ English Biographies

In2011, the publication of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of Chinawritten by Professor Ezra F. Vogel, a famous expert on China, has created a sensationin American book market. It is a typical English biography of a contemporaryChinese leader, describing the life story of the great leader Deng Xiaoping as well ashis era. Therefore, this book inevitably involves plenty of Chinese culture-specificitems. According to the previous studies on back-translation, the E-C translation ofcontemporary Chinese leaders’ English biographies, especially the translation of theChinese culture-specific items in those biographies can be a sort of back-translation.And it is of special significance to do a research on the back-translation of Chineseculture-specific items in the contemporary Chinese leaders’ English biographies.The present thesis takes Vogel’s Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation ofChina and its Chinese version as the research object, collects several Chineseculture-specific items from the first two chapters of this book and classifies theminto three categories: proper names about historical events, organizations and officialtitles, quotations and political sensitive items. After comparing the original versionwith the translated version, the present author finds that Professor Feng Keli adoptsliteral translation, free translation, annotation, deletion, rewriting and restoration ofquotations as his main translation methods when back-translating the Chineseculture-specific items into Chinese.The research on the back-translation methods offers some suggestions for thefuture back-translation of Chinese culture-specific items in the Chinese leaders’English biographies, and provides a detailed case study for the future research onback-translation as well.