A Translation Report On The Ninth Chapter Of A Cultural Perspective On High Tang Literature

Based on Shaanxi Normal University Translation Project on Excellent Academic Works of Philosophy and Social Sciences, the author takes the ninth chapter of A Cultural Perspective on High Tang Literature as her translation task. This book, written by famous scholar Huo Songlin and his student Fu Shaoliang, whose researches focused on Chinese classical literature and literary theory, studies the literature in the High Tang period from the perspective of High Tang culture. This book opens up a new field of literature and culture study. From the point of Buddhism, the ninth chapter of this book studies the political system and social life of the High Tang, and presents the special spirit of High Tang culture. In addition, the writers discover the connotation of Buddhist culture which is embodied in High Tang poets' pursuit of personality and poetry creation. With its cautious and academic style, this chapter includes many idioms, sutras and verses about Zen Buddhism, which embodies the spirit and essence of Zen doctrines.The author, according to Toury's translation norms theory, conforms to culture and language regulation of the source text and applies foreignized strategy in the translation process. The final translation is supposed to be adequacy and faithfulness. From the perspective of preliminary norms, the author analyzes the directness of translation, in other words, whether Sanskrit can be translated into English through Chinese. In order to solve this problem, by employing translation skills such as addition and footnotes, the author combines Sanskrit words and English conceptions in her translation, which aims to be faithful to Buddhist doctrines embodied in Buddhist texts.This translation report includes five parts. The first part relates to a brief introduction to the background and significance of the project as well as the content of the translation task. The second part is the description of translation process, which mainly talks about the preparation of pre-translation and detailed process of translation. The third part is the introduction to translation theory. In this part the author mainly analyzes Toury's descriptive translation study (DTS) and his translation norms. In addition, the author briefly introduces the application of Toury's theory in her translation. The fourth part is case study, the central part of this report. Combining with translation theory, the author studies translation strategies and skills in translating Buddhist terms or idioms, titles of classics, sutras and Buddhist poems. The last part is conclusion. The author shares her understanding and reflections during the translation process, and points the imcompleteness and imperfectness in the translation.