A Critical Commentary On Selected E-C Translation Of Chapters 1-2 From The Rise And Fall Of Ancient Egypt

This is a commentary on the writer's English-to-Chinese translation of an excerpt from The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt written by Toby Wilkinson.This commentary at first introduces the source text and the significance of translating it,then shows the theoretical guidance and translation strategies and at last gives a conclusion.Two aspects make this translation project significant.First,the selected material as an authoritative text written by Toby Wilkinson,a well-known Egyptologist,is really reader-attracting,as it has a "rise and fall" theme running through the whole book and has an impressive language.Second,the book's translation may fuel the development of Egyptology in China.When it comes to translation theories,both communicative translation and semantic translation are employed for translating the excerpt.In terms of translation strategies,omission,conversion and extension are employed at the lexical level;converting the passive voice to active voice,reforming the sentence order and following the original syntactic order at the syntactic level;conjunction,substitution and reiteration at the textual level.The writer finds that in practice the combination of communicative and semantic translation methods can do a good job in guiding the translation of an informative scientific text.Another discovery is that getting help from some tools and a professional advisor,knowing the difference between English and Chinese and an adequate knowledge of diverse fields are also of great importance when we translate this type of text.In all,the writer hopes that this commentary can offer some implication for translating an informative text and hopes the translation can fuel Egyptology-related research in China.