A Critical Commentary On Selected C-E Translation Of The Second Stage Of The Mijimo Ritual:The Fire Worshiping Carnival

This project is carried out in an attempt to introduce to readers the Axi(a branch of the Yi)culture.As home to 25 ethnic minority groups,Yunnan boasts a great cultural-diversity unrivalled in China,a fact which has made it most fascinating to visitors from home and abroad.Of the 25 groups,the Yi stand out as one of the most unique because they have branched out into over 100 subgroups nationwide.In Yunnan alone,such subgroups have totaled over 40 in number.The Axi of Mile City of Honghe Prefecture is one of such subgroups.They share some old traditions with other subgroups,such as the moon dance(Tiaoyue)and the worship of fire,which has given rise to the annually-held fire worshiping rite in Hongwan Village.The rite has drawn attention from anthropologists like Lu Fang,who authored the book Fire Worship:An Anthropological Study on the Ritual of Axi Mijimo,which is the source text on which the present translation project is based.The excerpt translated is titled The Second Stage of the Mijimo Ritual:the Fire Worshiping Carnival in the book.It mainly gives accounts of what the Axi people do in the annual fire worshiping rite.In terms of the content,it belongs with what Peter Newmark defines as an "informative" text.As such it calls for translation strategies that are more in line with communicative translation than semantic translation or formal equivalence.What the translator finds most challenging in executing the project is to enable the target language readers to "see" what happens as close to the truth as possible.Thus a variety of approaches and techniques like restructuring,omission,amplification are employed.Other challenges include culture-loaded words and terms in the source text.To cope with them approaches like transliteration and domestication are also adopted.Translation helps bridge the gap between people of different cultures.It is hoped that the present project may allow people with an interest in ethnic culture in general and in the Axi culture in particular to gain insight into the life of this unique people of Yunnan.