Report On C-E Translation Of Those Figures And Affairs In The Three Kingdoms Period (Excerpts):Difficulties And Countermeasures Of Translating Chinese Four-Character Idioms

This report draws on a simulated project of translating the 11th chapter of the volume of Wei of Those Figures and Affairs in the Three Kingdoms Period.It is a piece of non-fiction historical literature.With a vivid,sagacious and profound language features,it wittily analyzes historical figures and their affairs in the Three Kingdoms Period from a modern perspective.This report is concerned chiefly with the difficulties of translating four-character idioms in it and the corresponding measures of handling these problems.The major purposes of undertaking the project are to spread Chinese culture and to enhance translation competence.Due to differences between Chinese and Western cultures,there are difficulties of translating Chinese four-character idioms with metaphorical and extended meanings.The first is the difficulty in reproducing the metaphors.The metaphors in most Chinese four-character idioms and English metaphors often share similar meanings but differ in vehicles and there are Chinese metaphors whose vehicles have no corresponding metaphorical meanings in English.So it is difficult to establish the relations between the vehicles and their metaphorical meanings;the second is the difficulty in coping with the extended meanings.They are mostly derived from historical facts and folk creations.Therefore,How to cope with the background information becomes a huge challenge.Skopos Theory provides theoretical solution to the aforementioned problems.According to the theory,translation skopos determines the translation strategies or methods to be adopted.The translation skopos of this project are to let common Western readers interested in Chinese history and culture understand the targeted text better,and the real Chinese historical information as well.Corresponding translation strategies are adopted based on the specific translation skopos.For the first type of difficulty,substitution is employed to reproduce metaphors with similar metaphorical meanings but different vehicles and literal translation plus annotation is used to reproduce metaphors with no corresponding metaphorical meaning.For the second type,notes and liberal translation are utilized to cope with the extended meanings derived from historical facts and folk creations respectively.Under the guidance of Skopos Theory and the use of proper translation methods,the translation problems have been successfully solved and this report may provide some insights into the translation of Chinese four-character idioms for other translators.