Paratexts And Academic Translation

Aside from being an established translator,Pan Guangdan is a major scholar in the fields of sociology,eugenics and ethnology as well as an established translator.He has translated several academic classics,in which the notes complement Chinese ancient literature to illustrate the differences and similarities between China and the West.By employing the paratexts theory of G�rard Genette,this paper selects Pan's translated work The Origin of the Family,Private Property and the State as material to analyze that Pan's notes have improved academic quality of the translated work,which creates a new version of original work in the Chinese academic field.This paper is divided into six chapters.Chapter One introduces the thesis background and main structure of this paper.Chapter Two is a literature review,which shows the content of paratexts theory and the relation between theory and translation.Chapter Three illustrates the related information of translator and his representative works.Chapter Four combines examples of The Origin of the Family,Private Property and the State and paratexts theory to analyze paratranslated authorial notes and authentic allographic notes.Chapter Five shows notes' academic value to Chinese sociology and anthropology.And the paper concludes the academic value into three parts: studying the ancient clan society of China;analyzing specificity of China's traditional society;expanding the study area of Chinese sociology and anthropology.The last chapter is the conclusion of this paper,and indicates its limitations.In a word,this paper will adopt descriptive research method to analyze content and significance of Pan's notes,and conclude the relationship between Pan's notes and the development of Chinese sociology and anthropology.The purpose of this paper is to draw more attention from scholars to the function of notes in academic works.