A Report On The Translation Of The Cultural History Of China(chapter Five)

This is a translation report on the translation of The Cultural History of China written by Professor He Xizhang.The translation material,over 11000 words,is an excerpt of Chapter Five that mainly introduces experience orientation of Chinese people,including high status of experience in ancient times,typical performance of past orientation,and prominent expression of revivalism.By reading the original text,the reader can have an intuitive understanding of the deep cultural factors and manifestations of Chinese people’s experience orientation.Hence,translation of this project has positive effect on the spread of Chinese culture.The source text has a lot of long and complicated sentences,which are composed of a number of clauses and vary in forms.Moreover,the complicated structure of the original sentence makes it more difficult for readers to identify the information flow and interrupts coherent thinking,making the Chinese-English translation more complicated.Based on the theory of thematic and information structures in Systemic Functional Grammar,this report analyzes several types of thematic progression patterns,sorts out the information organization and textual construction of the source text,and forms the thematic progression patterns and information characteristics of the translation.The analysis of the thematic structure helps the translator clarify the information distribution,and then produce a translation that follows the typical thematic progression patterns in the target language based on the differences between English and Chinese.The report analyzes six thematic progression patterns in the source text,including constant theme pattern,simple linear pattern,constant rheme pattern,coordinate pattern,split rheme pattern and irregular pattern.The report points out that the translator should first try to retain the thematic progression pattern of the source text if the method of development in both texts are the same or similar.However,due to the differencesbetween Chinese and English,such as syntactic and grammatical differences or language norms,the translator has to adjust or restructure the thematic progression pattern.