A Report On The Translation Of Viking Britain(Excerpt)

This report is based on the translation of an excerpt from the popular historical book Viking Britain written by Thomas William,the British contemporary historian and writer.Thomas Williams has drawn on his experience as project curator and new academic research to tell the story of the “Vikings”,whose impact on the British Isles was profound and enduring,shaping British social,cultural and political development for centuries.The original text has not only quoted the fragments of Old English poetry “Beowulf”,but also has contained abundant historical and geographical terms and background knowledge,which made the translating process really challenging.The reflection of the translating process and the analysis of the translation of the original text provided the writing materials for this report.Based on his own teaching and translation experience,Li Changshuan proposed that translation learning should focus on the substance behind translation,which led to reflection on the three kinds of behaviors in translation process.He argues that translation is a process of discovery and reproduction.Comprehension is a process of discovering subjective and objective truths through words.Expression is the process of representing the truth,including both content and form.Adaptation is an act of selectively reproducing the truth for the purpose of translation.The combination of the analysis framework of “understanding,expression and adaptation” and analysis of translation practice is of great significance to reproduce the actual translation process.Based on this analysis framework,this report has reproduced my translation process mainly by presenting the difficulties I encountered in comprehension,expression and adaptation.I have classified and analyzed those difficulties with specific cases,exploring the causes and the countermeasures taken to solve the problems.I mainly adopted such methods as literal translation and free translation,addition and subtraction,division and combination.Besides those methods,during the translating process,I deeply excavated the cultural information the author wants to convey to ensure that the target readers have the same reading experience as the readers of the source language.In the process of this translation practice,I have not only gained valuable experience,such as historical text translation strategies and skills,but have found some existing problems as well,such as insufficient knowledge reserves and investigation and research capabilities to be improved.In addition,based on my experience in this translation project,I have summarized some requirements for translators who are going to translate historical texts.It is hoped that besides improving my own translation ability,my experience and reflection will provide some implications to other translators.