"Four-Party Online":The C-E Social Science Translation Model For Anthropogenic Mythology Of Ethnic Minorities In China

Academic translation is an essential way of academic exchange and knowledge dissemination across language boundaries. In 2010, China initiated the "Outward Translation Project of Chinese Works in Humanities and Social Sciences", with an aim of enhancing China’s academic discourses in the world on the one hand, and meeting the need of the West to know more about Chinese society on the other. However, only translations of high quality can ensure the successful dissemination of Chinese social sciences. For this reason, studies on the effective translation model for C-E social science translation is of great importance.Based on the C-E translation project of Anthropogenic Mythology of Ethnic Minorities in China, the study attempts to propose the "Four-Party Online" model, i.e. the collaborations between the translator and other three participants—ST author, English proofreader, and ethnic linguists, to reveal how the other three parties helped to guarantee the translation quality in three aspects: the comprehension of the social science text, TL expression and the translation of ethnic proper names, aiming to provide reference for the C-E translation of Chinese social science works, particularly those on ethnic topics.The study consists of three sub-studies. First, in the sub-study of the translator-author collaboration, the meeting records and e-mails were studied to reveal the main problems the translators confronted in comprehending the original social science text. Second, in the sub-study of the translator-English-proofreader collaboration, the revisions were categorized to show the typical problems in C-E translation of Chinese translators. Third, in the sub-study of translator-ethnic-linguists collaboration, a preliminary classification of the 55 ethnic minorities was made according to the Romanization of the writing systems they use, to show the general rule for translating the names of each ethnic minority.The study yields the following findings:1) In social science translation, the field-specific knowledge and the stylistic and textual features of the original text are two main factors that cause difficulties for the translators to comprehending and translating the original. For this reason, the involvement of the ST author, who is the expert in pertinent fields, is crucial for the translator to accurately understanding and rendering the academic knowledge and thoughts in the target text.2) In C-E translation, collaboration with the English proofreader is important for producing a natural, acceptable and intelligible target text. Besides, the study shows that the main problem in the well prepared C-E translation of Chinese translators is the inappropriate stylistic features, not the incorrectness of expressions and grammar.3)The general translation rules for 55 ethnic minorities are:1) names of 16 ethnic minorities (including Daur) that officially adopt only Chinese writing systems should be transliterated in the Chinese pinyin transliteration; 2) names of 16 ethnic minorities(including Manchu) that use traditional ethnic writing systems should be transliterated in their ethnic Romanization systems; 3) names of 21 ethnic minorities that have officially created or improved Latin ethnic writing systems should be first transliterated back into their Latin names, than loaned into English. The principles of translating ethnic names include:1) preserving the ethnicity,2) conforming to ethnic norms and writing systems,3) pinyin being the last choice, and 4) providing each with the corresponding Chinese version in the Index.4)The whole research shows that "Four-Party Online" model is effective to guaranteeing the quality of C-E social science translation in terms of accurate translation of the field-specific knowledge and TT expression. The nature of this model is a Chinese-foreigner collaboration with special emphasis on the involvements of the ST author and experts in relevant fields. To be applicable for the social science translation on other field knowledge, this "Four-Party Online" model can be modified by changing the "ethnic linguists" party into the experts in relevant fields.