A Report On The Translation Of Lingnan Culture(Excerpt)

With thecontinuous improvement of China‘s international status,Chinese culture is now drawing more and more attention in the world.As a branch of Chinese culture,Lingnan C ulture has suffered from lack of focus like other local culture.At present,systematic English materials related to Lingnan C ultureat home and abroad are so scarce that foreigners are not well informed of Lingnan C ulture.What‘s more,most of studies on C hinese-English translation of Chinese local culture lack systematic theoretical support.Therefore,it is crucial to carry out translation practice on Lingnan Culturebased on translation theory.As an academic work introducing the origin anddevelopmentof Lingnan C ulture,Lingnan Culturebelongs to a historical document written in narrative style.Taking the Chinese-English translation of its Introduction for an example,the author attempts to study the C hinese-English translation of culture-loaded words,classic quotations and difficult long sentences by adopting the methodologies of theoretical deduction,case study and retrospective approachon the basis of Functional Equivalence Theory(N ida,E.A.1986).She then summarizes some effective translations strategies and demonstrates the applicability of Functional Equivalence Theory in local culture translation,thus fulfilling the purpose that the target readers have the same feelings as the original readers while reading the translation and achieving the faithful conveyance of Lingnan C ultureto the world.The author firstly analysesthe stylistic features ofthe source text so as to point out the difficult points in translation.Given this,she attempts to adopt Functional Equivalence Theory for her translationpractice.Then she introduces the research status at home and abroad and describes task preparations.As a major part of the report,case analysis explores how to apply translation strategies to deal with translation problems under the guidance of Functional Equivalence Theory,aiming to achieve equivalences on lexical level,syntactic level and discourse level.In the end,the author appraises the translation practice then makes aconclusion.She finds that Functional Equivalence Theoryis feasible in guiding local culture translation.Furthermore,she adopts free translation on the whole,supplemented with literal translation,transliteration and annotation to translate cultural-loaded words and classic quotations.As for the translation of difficult long sentences,strategies like division,structural adjustmentandomission were used.And in order to make the logic order and cohesion between sentences clear,she adopts addition and pronouns substitution.In consideration of the difficulty in translation,time limit as well as the author‘s limitations of knowledge,the accuracy and the idiomaticity of the target text should be improved.This report is of great significance for it not only exercises the author‘s ability of translation and theory application,but also enriches the translation practices of Chinese local culture.It also provides valuable academic reference for the foreign scholars who study Lingnan C ulture and gives an impetus to the protection,promotion and development of Lingnan Culture.