Principles For Back-translating Chinese Place Names

This translation report is based on the translation practice of the special reports about Guangzhou Maritime Silk Road selected from The Chinese Repository.And here in this report,the translator selects Sailing Direction for the Coast of China,a representative of the special reports,as the source text.Sailing Direction for the Coast of China is a combination of reports about the navigation along the coast of China.It was published in the 8th issue of Volume 12 of The Chinese Repository from page 401 to page 433 in August,1843,so it is reasonable to find a lot of Chinese place names translated in English in it.However,the text was written more than one hundred years ago,so many Chinese place names were not translated with the method of transliteration which is widely used in the current translation of place names,and the accuracy of the translation was influenced by elements like dialects,culture and history.Therefore,except for some places that were given its Chinese names as annotation in the source text,it is hard for the translator to find the real Chinese names of the places.In face of this problem,the translator concludes three principles for backtranslating these Chinese place name by referring to relevant references under the guide of relevance theory.The three principles are avoiding giving misleading or wrong information,being loyal to the TO(target original)and annotating when failing to find the TO(target original).The translator hopes that this report and the cognition of the principles could become a reference for other translators when back-translating Chinese place names.