A Report On The Translation Of "Cosmogonic Myths"Section Of Myths Of The Cherokee

Myths are significant fruits of human civilization, serving as witnesses of ancient people’s perception and exploration of nature and society and still playing irreplaceable roles in cultural studies and literary creation today. Although myths like Greek and Roman ones are familiar to many Chinese people, systematic introduction to many other mythological systems is less common to see, including those created by North American natives. As a group belonging to Native Americans, the Cherokee people have created their unique civilization as well as myths. Still, their myths are only scattered in a number of Chinese books concerning Native American culture and mythology. This is harmful for Chinese readers to get a full knowledge of Cherokee culture and would hinder the preservation of cultural heritage, which is significant to cultural diversity. Since there are not many works on Cherokee culture in China, one of the most efficient ways to systematically introduce Cherokee culture to Chinese readers is to translate relevant works by foreign scholars. The text that has been translated in the project is from Myths of the Cherokee by American ethnographer James Mooney. Since the whole book is too much for the project, the author chooses the section of "cosmogonic myths" to translate because its themes are most universal to human civilizations.The report contains a general introduction of background information about this project, the guiding theory, an overview of the source text as well as a detailed analysis of problematic points encountered during the translation. Through the analysis, it could be concluded that translators should pay due attention to cultural terms and adopt proper strategies for them when dealing with texts with rich cultural load like myths. Other elements like the style of the original text and proper names should also be carefully rendered through cultural approach to express their cultural features. The translation and the original text are provided in the appendix.