A Report On The Translation Of Excerpts Of Western Translation Theory From Herodotus To Nietzsche

The sources of the translation report are excerpts from Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche. The excerpts present personal experiences and extracts of great works of some great scholars in ancient Greek and Rome, not only revealing their personal charisma and academic attainments, but also showing the charm of ancient Greek's civilization. Readers can have accesses to the origin of western translation theory and be equipped with more background knowledge of culture. There appear many proper names including names of people and places and meanwhile the sentences in the source text(ST) are mostly complex with many parentheses and modifiers in one sentence. Some of the textual styles tend to be descriptive while some others tend to be argumentative.The task is completed by following the theory of translation shift and strategies. The thesis is composed of four chapters. In the first chapter is a description of translation task,including the background and the characteristics of the task. The second chapter primarily introduces activities related to translation process, covering pre-translation preparation,translation process and post-translation quality control. The third chapter is the core of the report, a literature review of the development of translation shifts theory is made with an emphasis on the thoughts of Catford. Then demonstration of application of the translation shifts by Catford in this translation task is made. The role of the two types of translation shifts,namely level shifts and category shifts in instructing the translation of certain words and sentences has also been included in this chapter. The last chapter describes the limitation of this translation practice and the lessons learned. The report aims at providing a reference for similar translation work in the future so that a small contribution may be made to the improvement of quality and efficiency of other translators' work.