A Report On The English Translation Of "Life Etiquette And Rites Of Passage In Zhuang"(Excerpts)

The translation materials of this paper are selected from A Comprehensive Comparative Study of Zhuang and Thai nationalities' Traditional Culture: Volume III,which is edited by Qin Shengmin.More than 40 Chinese and Thai scholars made a concerted effort to accomplish this work.Volume III is divided into three parts: Part Six,Part Seven and Part Eight,which mainly focus on the comparative study of Zhuang-Thai traditional architecture,living customs and rites of passage.This translation report concentrates on the translation of the three parts in Chapter One of Part Eight “Life Etiquette and Rites of Passage in Zhuang” to promote social etiquette,birthday ceremonies and funeral rituals of Zhuang people.The report is formed by five parts: the first part is an introduction of translation project;the second part is a description of translation process;the third part is a theoretical framework in this project;the fourth part is case studies based on the problems encountered in the process of translation.They include lexical ones including the translation of the source text's title,Zhuang's ancient book titles and culture-loaded words.And at syntactic and discourse levels,I analyze the translation of idioms and Zhuang's folk songs.The fifth part is the conclusion of the translation.It summarizes shortcomings,experience and enlightenment of the translation as well as the suggestions for the translation of similar texts in the future.Based on the translation and case studies,the following conclusions are tentatively drawn: 1)The translator should find the corresponding translation expression of the source text's title based on a full understanding of its discourse meaning;2)The expressions of ancient book titles are concise and obscure.In order to make the translation more easily accepted by target readers,the translator should choose the translation method flexibly;3)In the translation of culture-loaded words,it is essential to preserve their cultural characteristics as much as possible on the premise of conveying the tenor and meaning;4)When translating Zhuang's idioms,the translator should accord with the characteristic of being concise and easy-to-understand and retain the unique cultural images of Zhuang nationality;5)When translating Zhuang's folk songs,we should put emphasis on restoring their rhythm and enhancing the beauty of phonology and structure of the translation as a song text.