A Critical Commentary On Selected C-E Translation Of Chanter 1(Section 1) Of Fire Worship:An Anthropological Study On The Ritual Of Axi Mijimo

The project consists of two tasks,the first of which is a Chinese to English translation practice of more than ten thousand characters and the second of which is a translation report based on the practice.The translated text is mainly excerpted from the first chapter of the book Fire Worship:An Anthropological Study on the Ritual of Axi Mijimo,titled "The First Stage of the Mijimo Ritual",in which the author describes the initial stage of the ritual in a detailed and vivid way at three aspects:the process of the ritual,the taboos of the ritual,and the characteristics of the ritual.It is not only a book to introduce the distinct culture of the Axi,but an anthropological fieldwork report to present the academic findings of the author.Therefore,the English translation of such sort of works has far-reaching significance for the study of anthropological literatures and for the popularization of Chinese minority cultures to English readers.Comprising five parts,which are the task description,the translation process description,the theoretical framework,case studies about the strategies and methods employed in the translation,and the conclusion,this commentary is an overall introduction and reflection of the translation practice.In the first two parts,the translator describes the main contents and stylistic features of the source text as well as how the translation is completed.The last three parts,in which the translator explores the translation difficulties and tries to find six feasible translation methods to solve them,are the core of this commentary.Guided by Vermeer's Skopos theory of translation,which holds that translation is determined by its translation purpose that has a lot to do with the targeted readers and that translators must adopt specific translation strategies and methods in accordance with a specific translation task,the translator of this task decides to employ translation strategies such as reinventing sentence structures,reframing discourses,repeating,etc.to help improve the translation.In view of the distinct characteristics of the English and the Chinese languages,this report mainly explores the methodological significance of various syntactical and lexical shifts when Chinese is translated into English,and meanwhile tries to dig in the difficulties in translating texts concerning minority cultures and to seek some feasible solutions to them.It also attempts to provide certain reference for the translation of anthropological researches on minority cultures,especially those of the Axi people's.Through what has been illustrated in the previous parts,the translator reaches the conclusion that the Skopos theory is applicable to guide this anthropological fieldwork report and to achieve the target skopos of a translation,translators should be bold and flexible to make shifts syntactically and lexically when translating Chinese into English as long as the information is retained.