The Application Of Annotation

Historical text usually involves much cultural knowledge including characters,historical background,geography and religious content,which may be familiar to readers under the same background as the writer,but new to those under different cultural background.Thus,translators need to use a certain compensation method to explain the cultural information involved in the source text.Annotation,as an effective means of translation compensation,can compensate for loss in translation,convey intentions of the original author and help target readers to better understand the work.This thesis chooses to discuss Chapter 2 of Asia:A Concise Hisory,an academic work written by an English historical and literature writer,Authur Cotterell,which contains much background information,such as characters,myths,historical and religious content,geographical knowledge and so on,they could influence readers'understanding of the source text without expressing them clearly.Therefore,they all need to be researched and explained.This thesis mainly analyzes how to compensate through annotation and questions related to adding annotations when translating such a text.Based on previous scholars' classification of translation compensation,this thesis analyzes specific application of annotation from three major aspects of footnote,explanation and in-text annotation,and summarizes principles of adding annotation.The author hopes this case analysis can provide some reference for similar translation practices of historical text.