A Report On Translation Of The Biography Of Yang Xiong (Excerpts)

This paper is a translation practice report based on the Chinese-English translation of story's excerpt from The Biography of Yang Xiong.Yang Xiong is the first cultural celebrity with national historical influence in the history of Shu culture.His cultural value has great significance for the inheritance of Chinese excellent traditional culture.The translation of The Biography of Yang Xiong is one of the projects that Chinese traditional culture is promoted by the School of Foreign Languages,Southwest University of Science and Technology,which is aimed to make efforts in dissemination and promotion of Sichuan culture,the education of Chinese excellent traditional culture and international exchange.The Biography of Yang Xiong,a biography about Chinese historical figure Yang Xiong,tells about Yang Xiong in the form of stories.The excerpt mainly tells the birth of Yang Xiong,his family history,taking Yan Junping as his master and studying under Mr.Yan's guidance,as well as his travels to Bashu and field investigation for his work The Book of King Shu.In the course of translation,there are many ancient historical backgrounds,figures and cultural backgrounds involved,which cannot be understood by foreign readers and thereby causes the phenomena of cultural defaults.In order to minimize translation losses and to make up for information in the source text caused by the gap of two different cultures,translation compensation becomes an indispensable strategy.Based on previous research on translation compensation,two main compensation strategies are used in this paper,namely explicit compensation that includes footnotes and in-text annotations,and implicit compensation that includes amplification,specification and contextual paraphrase,to analyze specific examples from the source text.In this way,the translated version can be easily accepted by readers of different cultures and languages.At last,the author hopes this translation practice and the report can provide reference for more translators.