A Report On The Chinese-English Translation Of Outline Of Chinese Historical Geography ? (Chapter Four)

This report is a practical report on C-E translation.The material is selected from Outline of Chinese Historical Geography,,written by Professor Shi Nianhai.This book is mainly an overview about Chinese historical geography,involving historical geography in hydrology,topography and vegetation and including all aspects in historical national geography,historical political geography,economic geography,military geography and so on.This translation practice selected the third and fourth section of Chapter Four of Outline of Chinese Historical Geography I. In these two sections,the author describes the movement of different ethnic groups and the changes of population centers in each dynasty from the perspective of history and geography,so as to introduce the historical population geography of China to the readers.Based on Nida's Functional Equivalence Theory,this report firstly analyzes the text characteristics of the selected chapter,including the translation of historical and cultural words,geographical names,titles of the ancient records,quotations and the writing style of this chapter.By the analyses of the text characteristics in this translation task,the translator summarizes the corresponding translation methods and skills,including transliteration,paraphrase and restructuring of the sentences to achieve the functional equivalence and the acceptance of the readers.It is of great significance for reference and guidance to the translation practice of later generations.This translation practice report is divided into five parts.The first part briefly introduces the background of translation practice,including the task overview,objectives,introduction to the translation maternal.The second part mainly describes the translation process,including preparations before translating,while-translating process and post-translation work.The third part mainly gives an introduction to Nida and his Functional Equivalence Theory,and its contributions and applicability to the translation material.Based on the Functional Equivalence Theory,the fourth chapter is to make analyses on the text characteristics summarized by the translator in the process of translation,expound the corresponding case analysis respectively and summarize relative methods and skills applied in the translation,which is the main part of the report.The fifth part is the end of the whole report,summarizing the reflections after this translation task,limitations and unsolved problems and suggestions for further researches.Through this practical translation task,the translator not only learns more translation skills and methods,but also knows the ability of bilingual expression and cultural literacy that an interpreter must possess.