A Report On The Translation Of The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot (Chapter10-11)

The development of globalization has brought with it more and more political,economic and cultural communication of the international community, which makes tourism away of life for many people. In consequence large numbers of travel writings are publishedand popularised, especially those that describe landscapes, customs as well as individualexperiences. With the further implementation of reform and opening-up policy, the outboundtourism boom has made the rendering of excellent foreign travel writings more significant.The translation will not only push the tourism forward, but also in some way promote theintercultural exchanges.This is a translation report on THE OLD WAYS: A Journey on Foot which is the thirdbook of British nature writer Robert Macfarlane. Chapter10and Chapter11(up to13488words) are rendered into Chinese, based on which the relevant analyses are given. Theoriginal writing is woven with geological, historical and religious knowledge of intriguingartistry, which also forms the difficult point in understanding and translating. Further more, itis noted for its vivid, poetic and philosophical quality.In the past, domestication and foreignization were the usual translation strategies tohandle travel writings. However, in this translation report, the writer employs Nida’stranslation theory “functional equivalence” for the purpose of achieving the “natural” effect.With the features of the travel writing taken into consideration, the writer uses varioustranslation methods, such as making the abstract into the concrete, literal translation withannotation, sentence-restructuring and so on; meanwhile the culturally-loaded words aretackled carefully in order to convey the implication and marrow of the original text. Duringthe translation practice, the writer at times has to keep “meaning” at the cost of “form” owing to the inherent differences of two cultures. It is hoped that the translation of travel writingunder the guidance of Nida’s “functional equivalence” theory will serve as a reference for thelater researchers.