A Report On Chinese-English Translation Of The Origin Of Ci Poetry

This report is based on the Chinese-English translation of the extraction of Prof.Mu Zhai's unpublished book,The Origin of Ci Poetry.Currently,the translation of classic poetry and Ci remains quite popular.However,books or theses studying the origin and development of Chinese poetry and Ci are rarely translated.Under this background,the translator chooses a book written by Prof.Mu Zhai who is quite accomplished in the poetry and Ci studies and hopes to contribute to Chinese culture's going global career via translating the work.The analysis of the source text is conducted from three perspectives: the lexical level,the syntactical level and the textual level.On the lexical level,the source text mentions a large number of proper nouns,classical Chinese characters and phrases and terminologies;On the syntactical level,the employment of long sentences,sentences without subjects and classical Chinese sentences is a typical feature of the source text;On the textual level,the style of the source text is very similar to academic papers,plain,formal and concise.Under Skopos theory,theoretical framework of this report,the translator conducts case analysis from three principles under the theory,including the skopos rule,the coherence rule and the fidelity rule.Under the skopos rule,the translator applies transliteration plus annotation and amplification to deal with some proper nouns,terminologies in Ci field and classical Chinese characters and phrases.The addition of information aims to help readers understand necessary knowledge and spread the culture concerning the origin and evolution of Ci.Under the fidelity rule,the translator mainly adopts division,combination and conversion to translate long and complicated sentences in the source text to make the translation in line with the English expression pattern and achieve coherence goal.Under the fidelity rule,the translator uses literal translation in dealing with book titles,dance music names and official position tiles and voice change,sentences without subject.Based on the study above,the translator finds that under Skopos theory,a translator could alter the attention from the source text to the function and aim of the target text and choose translation methods and techniques like literal translation,liberal translation,amplification,combination and voice change according to the three rules of Skopos theory in translating words,phrases and sentences flexibly to guarantee the quality of the translation.