A Report On Translating Nanyang Stone Relief

The Han Dynasty, a link between Qin Dynasty and Tang Dynasty, reached the first summit of economy, politics and culture in ancient China. The Han Stone Relief is inscribed on the stone with a knife,which is similar to the way the drawings and sculptures are created. The stone reliefs, which are abundant in preservation, serve not only as artistic relics, but also as an encyclopedia of Qin and Han dynasties. Nanyang, the hometown of Liu Xiu, the founder of Eastern Han Dynasty, is well-known for its quantity of Han Stone Relief, so much so that about3000reliefs are being exhibited in Nanyang Museum of Han Stone Relief. As far as the translator is concerned, till now no translated text for the selected materials has come out, so the practice has been carried out. The original text about10,000Chinese characters has been translated into English, in general, introducing Nanyang Han Stone Relief with illustrations. The practice helps the translator gain a better understanding of Newmark’s translation theory, and is also beneficial to the spreading of the local culture. Meanwhile, it is hoped that the practice is partly inspirational to others.This is a report of translation practice. The source text is selected from the materials for publicity in Nanyang Stone Relief Museum. The main contents include:Part One, Nanyang and Its Stone Relief; Part Two, Features and Its Value; Part Three, Contents. The translation aims to bring to the world the essence of ancient Chinese people, so mutual understanding will deeply be enhanced.The translation practice is under the guidance of Communicative Translation and Semantic Translation put forward by Newmark. According to Newmark, Communicative Translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on readers of the original. Semantic transition attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning to the original. According to the analyses of the language style of the original text, the majority of the selected contents are based on the theory of semantic translation, and the minority, on the communicative translation. Moreover, proper strategies and methods are applied in this project.The report consists of five chapters:1)Introduction,2)Theoretical guidance for the practice,3)Text description,4)Translation under the guidance of semantic and communicative theory,5)Translation methods,6)Summary.