A Translation Practice Report Of China And The West To 1600:Empire,philosophy,and The Paradox Of Culture(Excerpt)

This is a translation practice report.The source text is excerpted from the Chapter two of China and the West to 1600: Empire,Philosophy,and the Paradox of Culture by Steven Wallech.The book hasn't been translated into Chinese before the project.chapter two gives a systematic overview of variations on philosophy,religion,political ideology among other levels between China and the West preceding CE 1600 and clarifies how China and Greek followed vastly different development paths entering into modern civilization.During the process of translation,the rendering of cultural words inevitably poses challenge among others,in particular the Chinese culture coated with English.The translator learned from foreign cultural words categories in a narrow sense from A Textbook of Translation published in 1988 by Peter Newmark,a practical translation theorist.It occurred to the translator that the specific translation patterns drawn from the practice of mutual translation of the Indo-European language family of Newmark do not necessarily apply to English-to-Chinese translation and need improvement as well as amplification.That include defining words subject to material culture in a broad sense;enlarging the definition of “work” aside from “leisure” of “social culture”category;extending the scope of “social organization”,omitting “ecology”and ”gestures and habits” from the original five categories and so forth to go with the translation of cultural words into Chinese within chapter two.Studied on those cultural words,the translator found it a must not to use word-for-word translation for the “social culture” group,instead to put them into the specific history and culture environment based on the three classifications and further examination.Meanwhile,during the rendering of the word “Chinese”,the translator was able to get a glimpse of an undifferentiated impression of China in the author's eyes.As for “social organization”category,searching for cultural equivalents has the similar applicability to both China and Greek culture.