Back Translation In Academic Literature

This thesis chooses the academic text "Legalism in Chinese Philosophy" written by the Israeli sinologist Yuri Pines as the source text.With back translation as a strategy,the thesis intends to make an analysis on obstacles manifested in assimilating fa jia's thoughts with modern Western concepts.On one hand,the purpose of the thesis is to examine whether the academic text can be traced back to fa jia's thoughts from the perspective of ideological and cultural aspects.On the other hand,it attempts to explore how the employment of back translation can successfully restore the original connotations of fa jia's thoughts in China.Yuri Pines,the author of the academic text,is a famous sinologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.His research focuses on traditional Chinese political ideologies,ancient Chinese history,pre-Qin history,etc.What's more,his innovative propositions are of enlightening significance to the research in ancient Chinese history and ideologies.Based on the above considerations,this thesis selects this text written by Yuri as the source text.In terms of ideology and culture,the study based on the analytical probing into the translation of this text can show whether there is a gap between Yuri's understanding of fa jia's thoughts and the very thoughts of fa jia themselves.The back translation is a process in which a text which has been translated into a target language is retranslated into the source language.Based on this,it was found that there are two types of back translation during the translation practice.The first one is the back translation appearing in Yuri's text,mainly presented in the following cycle structure:Chinese concept-English expression-(Chinese Pinyin).In this regard,it is necessary to explore whether English expressions have successfully restored the original connotation of fa jia's thoughts.To be noticed,this type of back translation appears in the original source text rather than the target text.The second one is the back translation of fa jia's concepts in the source text.For this type of back translation,specific strategies are employed in order to successfully trace back to fa jia's thoughts.Owing to the fact that the cycle structure mentioned above is not usually mentioned and categorized into the back translation,this thesis intends to make a research on the definition of back translation in the literature review.In this way,the first type of translation is emphasized.For the classification of back translation,this thesis pays more attention to the ideological aspect,not just the "equivalence"between two languages.On one hand,the thesis concludes that Yuri's back translation including names of schools and titles related with fa jia cannot be traced back to fa jia's thoughts in terms of ideology and culture.However,in this thesis the definitive translation of some related concepts of fa jia has not been given for a lack of profound understanding of fa jia's thoughts.On the other hand,the thesis makes a summary on translation strategies employed when it comes to the back translation of titles of books and articles,concept words and cited literature including direct citations and indirect paraphrases.In regard to the back translation of titles of books and articles,translators should follow the conventionality and carry out the research to ensure the accuracy of translation.And for the back translation of concept words,translators should trace back to the corresponding source language in Chinese.As to the back translation of direct citations,original Chinese materials should be reproduced when translated,while for the indirect paraphrases,translators should adopt domesticating translation with Chinese materials for reference.