The Use Of Annotation In Historical Text Translation

Historical text involves a lot of cultural information including figures,historical background,geographical and religious content,which may be familiar to readers with the same background as the writer,but new to those from different cultural background.Thus,translators need to use certain compensation methods to explain the cultural information involved in the source text.Annotation,as an effective means of compensation in translation,can make up for loss in translation,convey the author's intentions and help target readers to better understand the original works.This texts chosen are from BBC History: The Story of the Victorians,which describes the development of the British Empire by portraying English celebrities living in the Victorian Age.The texts contain background information which needs to be researched and explained.Based on previous scholars' classification of annotation in translation,this thesis mainly analyzes how to compensate through annotation when translating such texts according to Kwame Anthony Appiah's Thick Translation Theory,discusses specific application of annotation from two major aspects of explicit annotation and implicit annotation,and finally summarizes principles of adding annotation.The author hopes this case analysis can provide some reference for similar translation practices of historical texts.