A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Peking And The Pekingese During The First Year Of The British Embassy At Peking (Excerpts)

This paper is a report of translation practice.The translation project covers chapter eight and chapter nine of the book entitled Peking and the Pekingese during the First Year of the British Embassy at Peking.The book was written by the English author David Field Rennie,who worked as a medical officer of the British Embassy at Peking(today's Beijing).He not only witnessed in person some important historical events,but also worked to communicate with various communities in China,thus gaining an insight into what Chinese culture was all about in the last decades of Imperial China.In this connection,the book comes as a firsthand encyclopedia of the study of Chinese history.The two chapters translated by the translator are almost 15,000 English words in total,covering a wide range of fields like politics,life,society,trade,customs and other aspects of the last years of Imperial China.And it mainly describes the political situation and inside stories of bureaucracy at that time.This report consists of five chapters:the first chapter provides a brief introduction to the whole project;the second one introduces the preparations for the translation work and analyzes language characteristics of the source text;after that,the third chapter illustrates Jin Di's equivalent effect theory;in the fourth chapter,the translator focuses on the application of Jin's theory,frequently-used translation skills and specific case studies in the project;the last chapter draws a conclusion of enlightenment and problems to be solved in the whole project.According to the stylistic and linguistic features of the text,Jin Di's equivalent effect theory was selected as the guiding theory.In "case studies",the core chapter of the report,the translator discussed specific cases and their translation skills under the guidance of equivalent effect theory.The original text contains a number of words with historical and cultural backgrounds.So in order to retain the historical andcultural elements and provide a understandable translation,the translator adopted the methods of transliteration,back-translation and annotation.As for the long and complex sentences,the translator combined free translation with literal translation on the basis of full understanding of the original texts,so as to make the receptor understand the translation easily.The translator hopes that the translation and report will be helpful for trans-culture communication,and can provide some historical data for the scholars of sinology studies.