Report On The Chinese-English Translation Of Interpreting Dunhuang: Discovering The Library Cave(Excerpt)

As a kind of soft power,culture has become an important standard in measuring a country's overall national strength.In China,Dunhuang culture has a long history,being both extensive and profound.However,various obstacles are in the way of translation,leading to unsatisfactory target texts both in quantity and quality.The author chooses the second part Encyclopedic Documents and the third part Prosperous Paintings from the book Interpreting Dunhuang: Discovering the Library Cave.These two parts demonstrate the significance of discovering the Library Cave in studying Dunhuang culture and even the Chinese culture by introducing the discovered documents and paintings.The author would like to translate to make more people all over the world know Dunhuang culture better.At the same time,the spread of Dunhaung culture is in favor of developing our Dunhuangology and improves the culture soft power of China accordingly.The report is divided into five parts.The first part is related to the background and significance of writing this report.The second part mainly introduces the content of the book as well as the features about the book.The third part describes the pre-translation,translation tools and quality control.The fourth part mentions the case analysis from the aspect of words and sentences.The translation of culture-specific words and titles of ancient works is included in the part of translating words while the translation of long sentences and non-subject sentences is involved in the part of translating sentences.In addition,it is the most difficult part to translate cultural words.The author adopts transliteration with annotation and free translation,retaining Chinese elements as much as possible and manifesting Chinese culture characteristics.The last part is conclusion,including gains and deficiency.Through translation of the book,the author learns to use some methods and techniques of translating words and sentences.However,many problems related to translation remain to be settled such as the author's lacking relevant translating practice on Chinese cultural books and relatively insufficient reference books.To some degree,these factors have some influenced the translation of the excerpted parts of the book.