The E-C Translation Report On The World Of The Huns—studies In Their History And Culture(Chapter Five)

This is an English-Chinese translation report on The World of the Huns—Studies in Their History and Culture(Chapter Five).The author of the book is Otto J.Maenchen-Helfen who is an Austrian scholar,sinologist,author,and historian.He spent many years and extensive resources in exploring the mystery of the Huns.The book was published in 1973,but there is no Chinese translation version up to now,which becomes one of the reasons why the translator chooses this book for the translation project.This book provides comprehensive aspects of the Huns including their history,economy,society,warfare,religion,art,race and language.Therefore,it has aroused great repercussions and has been an oft-cited book for the study of the Huns all over the world.First of all,the translator determines that the type of the text is a non-literary genre.According to the text type,the translator decides to use objective language instead of ornate language to make the translation be faithful to the source text.In this translation report,some translation difficulties are mainly discussed and analyzed with specific examples.There are mainly three types of difficulties the translator encountered in the process of translation,which are lexical,syntactic and discourse difficulties.In lexical level,there are plenty of proper nouns including person's names,geographical names and military terms of the Huns.The syntactical problems consist of long sentences which are mainly complicated with structure of syntax and uncommon words to depict the weapon and warfare of the Huns.In discourse level,since the source text belongs to the academic historical work,its linguistic features and style characteristics should be taken into account in the process of translation.The translator not only considers how to accurately convey the meaning of the source text but also takes the target readers into account.Therefore,different translation strategiesare adopted to solve these difficulties.Annotation and interpretation are used to solve difficulties in lexical level while splitting,reversing,combination and conversion of voice are used to deal with syntactic difficulties.In discourse level,using Chinese expressions properly and adding conjunctive words are used to make the target text coherent and to convey the language style of the source text.Finally,translation experience,problems and deficiencies are discussed.The translator realizes that translation is a continual process of accumulation through this translation practice.It is hoped that the translation of this book could offer some referential value to the domestic study of the Huns and to the translation of relevant text.