A Report On The Translation Of Life Among The Chinese And Journeys In North China (Excerpts)

This report is concerned with the translation of selected chapters, an important part of Life among the Chinese and Journeys in North China, respectively written by Williamson, and R.S Maclay. The two books widely narrates China's geographical, history, religious, government agencies, also with detailed recordation about the mental state of Chinese and local customs and practices, which provides important research materials and promote the progress of western sociology.The chapter 6 & 7 of Life among the Chinese mainly narrates the three class of Chinese religion, namely Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, also states their respective preaching and interrelationships, involving many religious terms and classics quotations. The chapter 4,5 and 12 of the second book describes the receptivity of the Chinese, the country and its government, and journey round the Shan-tung promontory, involving translation of official's name of China and names of people and areas. In view of the translation difficulties and language features, the author takes Jakobson's Intralingual Translation and Interlingual Translation Theory as guiding principle for this translation practice, and makes an explanation and case analysis.In "case analysis", the author analyzes and classifies the difficulties mentioned above, combining with translation process and thinking, and lastly gets solutions. The original text contains a lot of religious terms and classics quotations, and it should be translated after understanding the original context and verifying the source. Under the macro guidance of Jakobson's intralingual translation and interlingual translation theory, the author firstly makes an intralingual translation from English to concise Chinese, and then translates modern Chinese into classical Chinese so as to convey the context to foreign readers faithfully. For some religious terms, in the light of fully understanding background information, adopts free translation. For names of people and areas, often adopts literal translation plus explanation and back translation based Wade-Giles method. As to official's name of China, the author often adopts free translation plus explanation. Besides, due to the differences in the language expressions of Chinese and English, the author also takes various translation methods. The last part is the summary of the experience and Lessons of translation.Inspired by the Intralingual Translation and Interlingual Translation proposed by Jakobson, the author firstly makes an intralingual translation, namely translation from English to Chinese, and then makes interlingual translation in the light of understanding the original context. Meanwhile, the author takes Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory in intralingual translation, also takes addition, free translation, division and illustrates theses translation strategies through case analysis with the purpose of convey the context to foreign readers faithfully. The author hopes this translation and report are helpful for future studies on western sinology.