A Translation Report(E-C) On Philosophical Texts

The major trends of contemporary western philosophy are phenomenology and philosophy of language,among others.Ludwig J.F.Wittgenstein,an outstanding philosopher in the twentieth century,founder of the philosophy of language,adopted a phenomenological perspective on the body-mind problem,which was regarded as a breakthrough of the problem.A paper The problem of other minds: Wittgenstein’s Phenomenological perspective,by Soren Overgaard,a professor in University of Copenhagen,Denmark,together with over ten other papers,was one of the philosophical texts translated by the author.The thesis is a report based on the translation of the paper by Professor Overgaard.Aimed to guide future translation practice and provide a reference for similar philosophical translation,this paper explores the difficulties in translation of English philosophical texts into Chinese,and it also proposes some corresponding translation strategies and specific solutions to the problems.This paper consists of five chapters.The first chapter gives an introduction to the original text,the background and the significance of the translation project.The second chapter expounds on the process of this translation project: pre-translation preparation,translation process as well as post-translation revision.With focuses on translation of the technical terms,understanding of long English sentences and translation of these sentences,the third chapter deals primarily with the specific difficulties in translating English philosophical texts.In translation of the technical terms,two difficulties occurred: seemingly common philosophical terms and the multi-translation of some particular terms.In understanding long English sentences,the primary obstacles lie in lack of relevant philosophical knowledge and poor understanding of the sentence structures.On top of that,there also exist problems in the Chinese version: poor logicality,absence of conciseness,and lack of punctuation flexibility.To address these problems,the fourth chapter provides some solutions and translation strategies.Specifically speaking,in terms of the technical terms,some parallel texts or the dictionaries in this particular field are consulted;background knowledge and logical structures are key factors in understanding long sentences;translation strategies that help to tackle the above-mentioned problems mainly include: adjusting clause order,maintaining the semantic focus of the original sentences,transforming long English sentences into short Chinese sentence segments and proper use of punctuations.The last chapter is conclusion,a summary of the experience and knowledge drawn from this translation practice.