A Report On English Translation Of The Manuscripts Of Yan Yangchu (Excerpts)

The Manuscripts of Yan Yangchu is a collection of manuscripts by the famous educator Yan Yangchu(1890-1990)published in important newspapers and journals.Two articles in this book are selected for translation,namely,“Introduction to Civilian Education” and “The Purpose and Final Mission of Civilian Education”.These informative texts not only inform the reader of the practical reasons of his civilian thought,but also imply its practical significance to early modern education and social development.This is a report on the English translation of The Manuscripts of Yan Yangchu which focuses on how to handle the cohesion in the translation of such informative texts under the guidance of John Cunnison Catford's translation shift theory.The report consists of five parts.The first part is an introduction of the translation project including the background and importance of the project.The second part is the task description of The Manuscripts of Yan Yangchu,with introduction to the original text,the brief analysis of its linguistic features and Catford's translation shift theory.The third part is the process description that includes translation preparation,problems in translation process and proofreading.The fourth part is the body of the translation report,which focuses on how to achieve cohesion with category shift.The first aspect is the lexical cohesion.The selected part has rich culture-loaded words and rhetoric of metaphor and metonymy to express concepts and views.As such metaphor-loaded words and coined words usually do not have exact corresponding expressions in English,we adopt the translation strategy of domestication and combine the method of lexical category shift as well as the unit level shift of lexical items.The second aspect is the cohesion of sentence patterns.There are varied sentence structures and patterns in the original text.To keep the original information intact and help target language readers fully understand the original text,we employ such conversion methods and techniques as the change between active sentences and passive ones,the change between affirmative sentences and negative sentences,the change between rhetorical questions and declarative sentences,the change between topic prominence and subject prominence.The third aspect is intersentential cohesion.As the original text was written in the transitional period from classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese,so the cohesion of Chinese loose sentences is often recessive and non-specific,mixing classical and vernacular words.We add certain coherent words and combine various conversion methods and techniques,such as the change of reference,substitution and punctuation,to reduce the logic confusion of target readers and increase the accuracy of Chinese cultural output.The last part summarizes the defects,lessons,experiences and gains of this translation practice.Educational thoughts are not only the premise of educational practice,but also have great impact in the cultivation of people's comprehensive quality.As such,translating in English the educational text is an important way to spread Chinese educational thoughts and enhance international educational exchanges.Additionally,with the translation process and case analyses,this report aims to learn and sum up some strategies and methods for the translation of informative-educational text in the republic of China,hoping to give some enlightenment for the translation of similar texts.