Compensation In Translation Of The Battles That Changed History

This report is based on the translation of the book Battles That Changed History: An Encyclopedia of World Conflict by Spencer C.Tucker.In this book,he tries to make “facts” speak,to put “battles” as much as possible into the context of the war,and to give readers a general idea of how the world's military history developed.According to this feature,the translation should be as faithful as possible to the original text,not only taking into full consideration of the historical background at that time,but also using fluent Chinese to express it.The report mainly discusses the first half of the book,which spans from the 15 th century BC to the 16 th century AD.Most of the battles took place in ancient Greece and Medieval Europe.The report consists of four chapters: task description,task procedure,case study and conclusion.The first chapter mainly introduces the characteristics of the translation materials and points out the problems encountered in the translation process,such as the complex relationships between persons,abstract geographical locations and so on.In addition,this chapter also briefly explains the purpose and significance of this report.The second chapter includes preparation,translation process and proof reading.The third chapter,case study is the main body of this report,which illustrates how to use the method of translation compensation in the actual practice.Translation compensation methods are common in English-Chinese translation and serve as an effective approach for translators to solve the problem of “translation losses”.In translating the book Battles That Changed History,we have used many means of compensation,such as annotation,paraphrase and amplification.By using these methods,the author of the report analyzes the specific problems and tries her best to give a satisfying solution in translation.Based on the actual situation and typical examples of the translation,the author summarizes some of our realizations in the last chapter,emphasizing the importance of improving the ability to master our native language and the necessity of constant review.