A Report On The Translation Of The Origins Of The Greek Architectural Orders(Excerpt)

This report is based on the translation of an excerpted text from the first chapter of The Origins of the Greek Architectural Orders,which was authored by Barbara Barletta,professor of art history at the University of Florida,and published by Cambridge University Press in 2001.In this book,Professor Barletta examined Ten Books on Architecture(Ten Books on Architecture is a treatise written by Vitruvius who is an architectural theorist of ancient Rome.)in an attempt to collate and compare the two sources as well as to offer a coherent reconstruction of the origins and early development of the Greek architectural orders.The excerpted text primarily discusses the viewpoints from Ten Books on Architecture on the origins of Doric order and Ionic order,including when and where did them originate,how the name of specific order came to be,what was the first Doric or Ionic construction.This report elaborates on the methods adopted for translation difficulties on lexical,syntactic,and stylistic levels with the guidance of the functional equivalence theory developed by Eugene A.Nida,as well as the linguistic differences between English and Chinese.On the lexical level,the translating of architectural terms,proper nouns,and nominalized words are worth analyzing.Reading parallel texts,consulting dictionaries and the Internet were the main tools for translating architectural terms and proper nouns,and the main translation method is literal translation.Specific translation methods were used to translate nominalized words,such as,conversion of part of speech,word addition.On the syntactic level,the translation of different types of complex sentences and passive sentences was the most painstaking process,and adjusting word order,changing sentence structure,converting voice of sentence were used to solve these problems.On the stylistic level,the translation of in-text citation,superscripts were paid rather more attention,and the translator adhered to the criterion of being faithful to source text.This report consists of five chapters.Chapter one briefly introduces the background of the project,significance of the project and report layout.Chapter two analyzes the content and features of the source text,giving a summary of the content of the ST and expounding its linguistic features on the lexical,syntactical and stylistic levels.Chapter three presents the translation process,and Nida’s functional equivalence theory is presented as the guiding theory for the translation practice.Chapter four elaborates on the various difficulties in translation as well as their corresponding solutions.Case studies emphasizing different language difficulties are expounded in detail.Chapter five draws a conclusion of the whole translation process and summarizes the translation methods used to solve the difficulties encountered in the translation process.Lessons gained and problems to be solved are also mentioned in this chapter.