On The English Translation Of Official Titles In Moss Robert's Version Of San Guo Yan Yi:From The Perspective Of Translation As Adaptation And Selection

With the spread of Chinese culture in recent years,the English translation of Chinese classics like San Guo Yan Yi has received more attention from translators.As a military novel,the official titles in San Guo Yan Yi are surely one of the representatives of its culture-loaded words.However,the existed researches on the English translation of official titles in San Guo Yan Yi are relatively rare and unsystematic.Therefore,under the guidance of Translation as Adaptation and Selection,this thesis will give a systematic research on the English translation of official titles in San Guo Yan Yi.The theory of Translation as Adaptation and Selection regards translation activities as the translator's adaptation and selection process in the “translational eco-environment” and the translation method can be generalized as three-dimensional transformations,namely a process of adaptive selection and transformation focused on language dimension,cultural dimension and communicative dimension under the principle of multi-dimensional adaptation and adaptive selection(Hu,2004: 133).The classification and comparison of the official titles in San Guo Yan Yi indicates that although the official titles in the Three Kingdoms period are complex in structures,diverse in titles and rich in connotations,the official titles of Gongguan,Shengguan and military official titles have certain rules to follow and this provides a basis for a systematic research on the translation of official titles.Focusing on Moss Robert's translation of San Guo Yan Yi,this paper tries to analyze the techniques adopted by Moss Robert to translate official titles,evaluate the effect of his translation and propose some suggestions.At last,this article draws a conclusion that when translating official titles in ancient China,the translator can comprehensively adopt a series of techniques such as transliteration,paraphrase,idiomatic translation,annotation,generalization,addition and ellipsis to guarantee the quality of the translation and expand the readership.In the linguistic dimension,the translator can adopt the techniques of transliteration and capitalization to highlight these titles that are unique to ancient China,so that the target language readers can easily recognizethem as proper nouns.At the same time,he should also pay attention to the different rhetorical expressions between Chinese and English.In the cultural dimension,idiomatic translation can be used to reflect some deep meaning of official titles.For example,the different translations of the“?”in“??”and“???”into a“king”and a“prince”respectively can effectively preserve the cultural differences between these two titles.Besides,annotation is effective to guarantee the readability of the translation and represent cultural connotations of official titles.In the communicative dimension,generalization can diminish the reading difficulty of the translation.Addition and ellipsis can be used to meet the expression habit of target language readers.Through the research on translation techniques of official titles in the English version of San Guo Yan Yi,the author hopes to broaden the theoretical application scope of Translation as Adaptation and Selection.Besides,the study of this thesis may also provide some inspirations and references for the standardized translation of official titles in ancient China and the translation of Chinese classics.