A Report On E-C Excerpt Translation Of Cosmos And Community-From The Perspective Of Chesterman's Translation Norm Theory

This is a report based on the translation practice of academic research work in the field of Daoism.The introduction and conclusion of the book Cosmos and Community:The Ethical Dimension of Daoism are excerpted as the source text for this report.Written by Livia Kohn,the source text mainly presents her research on Daoist precepts from an ethical point of view.The source text is characterized by strict logic,rigorous use of words with Daoism features and it is filled with quotations,terms,culture-loaded words.In the process of translation,the translator needs to retain the original author's style of writing as much as possible and restore the Daoism characteristics of the source text.Unifying the terminology and back-translating the quotations from the original Daoist classics are also a challenge for the translator.To better solve these problems,Chesterman's norms theory is adopted as the guiding theory.Chesterman's translation norm theory is a theory with a comparatively systematic structure.It is constituted by two norms:the expectancy norms and the professional norms,which influence the translation product and translation behavior respectively;four fundamental translational values:clarity,truth,trust,and understanding,which govern the translation norms;three strategies:syntactic strategy,semantic strategy,and pragmatic strategy,which are restricted by the four fundamental translational values.It provides the translator not only the theory but also the methodologies to deal with the problem encountered in the translation.In this report,Chesterman's ideas of the four values are applied respectively to deal with the issues of the professional factors of the Daoism background,the strictness of the academic character,the special relationship between the client and the translator and the cross-culture issues.The four fundamental translational values provide the translator with guidance at a macro level and the three strategies listed specific translation methods at a micro level in the translation of Daoism academic research.Through this report,the translator finds that Chesterman's norm theory is applicable to the translation of Daoism academic research to some extent.