The English Translation Of The Great Wisdom Of Ch’an Buddhism’s Extract And Its Translation Report

This report is an analysis of the text form the Great Wisdom of Ch’an Buddhism based on one of the most famous contemporary Chinese masters in Ch’an Buddhism—Wu Yansheng’s lecture on Ch’an and its translation process. As the product of sinofication of the Buddhism, Ch’an Buddhism plays an important role in Chinese civilization and has an influence on the world culture. The Great Wisdom of Ch’an Buddhism is a very popular masterpiece on the subject of religion. It tells about many different humorous and witty stories full of philosophy by very colloquial expressions in an intelligible way. Chinese to English translation of such a masterpiece is not only an introduction of the culture and art of Ch’an to the western readers, but also an experience of profound philosophy and unique artistic charm in Ch’an quotations. What’s more, it is much easier for English native speakers to have a preliminary understanding of Ch’an Buddhism culture and great interest in it.Case study is the major approach adopted in writing this report. It mainly focuses on the study of translation methods and translators’ cultural philosophy and aesthetic value. At the same time, it also discusses how translators should re-construct their cultural identity. Translation points used here are sorted into three levels:, the translation of culture-loaded words, translation of sentences and translation of literary style. Based on Newmark’s theory of communicative translation, this report explained several cases by different translation methods and skills. In the translation of culture-loaded words, the methods used to reproduce Chinese traditional culture accurately and vividly mainly include following the established translation, transliteration with annotation, literal translation with annotation, substitution, explanatory translation and free translation. While the translation methods like amplification, omission, conversion between active voice and passive voice, affirmation and negation transformation and sentence reconstruction are applied into the translation for language differences. Meanwhile, there is a list of shortcomings integrated in this report, with regard to which the translator will strive for further improvements in the future.