A Report On The C-E Translation Of Chinese Shadow Play (Excerpts)

Shadow play is a folk art prevalent in China.It has a long history and profound cultural meanings in close connection with religion,opera and painting.In 2006,shadow play has been listed into the first national intangible cultural heritage list by State Council.As the essence of Chinese folk culture,shadow play is one of the important ways for international community to understand Chinese folk culture.It plays an important role in demonstrating China's intangible cultural heritage and spreading Chinese folk culture.This thesis is a translation report on the basis of the first four chapters of Chinese Shadow Play,which introduce the history,schools,production process of Chinese shadow play as well as the forms of shadow silhouettes.The source text is folk text,and the purpose of its translation is to spread Chinese folk culture.Chinese shadow play has rich cultural connotation.Many words do not have exact corresponding expressions in English,which result in a large number of vocabulary vacancies between the two languages.Under the guidance of communication theory,the author analyzes the difficulties and translation methods used in the process of translation from the lexical aspect.Vocabularies of the selected part are classified into four categories,namely vocabularies about facial makeups,costume,appellation and props.According to the characteristics of these vocabularies,methods such as transliteration,literal translation,free translation,amplification,literal translation with annotation and transliteration with annotation are adopted,so that the translation can be recognized by the target audience to the greatest extent and get good communication effect.Based on this translation report,the author aims to summarize some translation strategies and methods for folk texts through the analysis of translation process and cases,so as to provide some references for the translation and research of similar texts.