The Flexible Application Of Semantic And Communicative Translation In Rendering The Chinese Art Of Tea

Written by the well-known sinologist John Blofeld,The Chinese Art of Tea is one of the greatest tea books in the world and the first work in English specialized in Chinese tea and art.All the material compiled in twelve chapters is written from John Blofeld's own experience during years of traveling throughout China.He made a comprehensive introduction to Chinese tea culture to western readers from the aspects of implements and spirit.The Chinese Art of Tea not only affords meaningful references to tea culture researchers,but also plays a significant role in transmitting Chinese tea culture to the world.The book has not yet had a Chinese version.The tenth and eleventh chapters are selected as translation material's object of this study and the translation practice report is based on this version.The tenth chapter mainly elaborates on the selection of tea,the preparation of tea utensils and the methods of tea brewing and tea drinking.The eleventh chapter presents a description of the relationship between tea and ceramics,in which the development and evolution of Chinese tea utensils are primarily narrated.In addition to the professional introduction to Chinese tea,various descriptions of Chinese tea culture and spirit are exhibited in each chapter.Therefore,this is not only a manual about Chinese tea culture,but also a literary work with emotions and feelings of the author of the original book,which contains varied styles.Through the translation of this book we can get a better insight into foreign scholars' ideas about Chinese tea culture and find out the possible misinterpretation and mistranslation of Chinese tea culture by foreign authors,thus making timely correction and avoiding possible erroneous message relay.This translation practice report takes Newmark's semantic translation and communicative translation as its theoretical framework.Semantic translation focuses on maintaining the linguistic features and expressions of the source language,while communicative translation tends to achieve the same functional effect as the original text.The flexible application of the two approaches can provide a better guidance for the translation process and achieve the translation purpose.This paper intends to explore the application of the two approaches in translation from three levels of lexicon,syntax,and discourse,and provide some new ideas and more practical cases for the English-Chinese translation of tea culture texts.The conclusions of this report can be summarized as follows: At the lexical level,there are many culture-loaded words and words with expressive function in the original book.Semantic translation is more applicable in translating the first category of words and both semantic translation and communicative translation are frequently adopted in rendering the second.In addition,four-character structure is used to make the expressions in the translate text more aesthetic and expressive.At the sentence level,long sentences and passive sentences are frequently used in the source text.Communicative translation is the most commonly used approach to reconstruct and rearrange the sentence patterns,while some juxtaposed clauses patterns with unique expressiveness in the original text are retained by employing semantic translation approach.Meanwhile,Blofeld's misunderstandings about cultural information in the original book are detected,revised and noted down.At the textual level,both semantic and communicative translation approaches are flexibly applied to adjust the style and genre of the original text according to the context,and communicative translation approach is employed to fill in the semantic gaps in the translated text.