A Report On English Translation Of The Family Letters From Zeng Guofan(Excerpts)

The Family Letters from Zeng Guofan witnessed the life experience of Zeng Guofan, which expresses his ideas and thoughts on national governance, government administration, self-cultivation and family harmony. It is a collection of Zeng’s family letters as well as his thoughts. It has significant historical value in researching Zeng Guofan.Through this translation practice, I knew more about Zeng Guofan and Huxiang culture, which contributes to inheriting the outstanding culture of the Chinese nation. Meanwhile, it is of significant value to the spread of Chinese culture for it can make foreigners know more about China and fall in love with China and then carry forward the Chinese culture.The task of this translation practice is to translate some family letters from Zeng Guofan into English. The translator should translate the required materials under the guidance of the appropriate theory. In the process of translation, some suitable translation strategies and methods were applied. The translator made extensive use of the knowledge and skills he learned from those translation theories and practices to make the translation idiomatical and smooth so as to exactly transfer the meaning of the source language. To make a good performance in this translation,the translator looked up many information about Zeng from books and Internet. By this translation, the translator can truly experienced the spirit of Zeng Guofan.This translation practice is mainly guided by Yan Fu’s translation principles of “faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance”. The whole translation adheres to literal translation with liberal translation as a complementary role. This paper mainly analyzes the translation strategies and methods applied in the translation of The Family Letters from Zeng Guofan and illustrates the problems the translator met during this translation practice and then find solutions to those specific problem through case study.