Translation Of Official Titles In History Of The Xiongnu

Of late years,cultural translation has become a category of translation study.As the core part of traditional Chinese culture,historical classics attract more and more scholars in the translation field to attach great importance to it and conduct research into the cultural translation of Chinese classics.As a description of ancient northern ethnic groups in China,History of the Xiongnu enjoyed an important place in the Chinese history and even history of the world.And the book contains a large portion of official titles of specific duties which can fully demonstrates the rich connotations of ancient Chinese institutional culture.Through applying Peter Newmark's translation theory and comparing the official titles in two English versions of Shi Ji(the first annual and biography general history in China): Records of the Grand Historian translated by Burton Watson and Selections from Records of the Historian translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang,the author proposed the following findings:1.The thesis demonstrates that when coming to the translation of informative texts,including History of the Xiongnu and Shi Ji,communicative translation should be used as the primary strategy.2.The official titles in History of the Xiongnu can be classified into official titles without premodifiers and official titles with premodifiers.3.It has been discovered that translation of official titles without premodifiers are tackled in communicative translation in order to better fulfill the major function of the official titles.Reflected on translation methods,free translation is adopted to handle such kind of official titles.4.In terms of the translation of official titles with premodifiers in History of the Xiongnu,the combining of communicative translation and semantic translation is regarded as the best solution so as to preserve the cultural factor of the original language as well as demonstrate the actual function of the official titles.Reflected on translation methods,most official titles are dealt with free translation plus literal translation and a few official titles are delivered in free translation plus transliteration.As for other official titles with premodifiers,free translation is adopted singly when it is hard to reproduce the original form of the premodifiers.