A Report On E-C Translation Of The Path:What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About The Good Life Under The Equivalent Effect Theory

With economic development and social progress,great improvement has been made in people's material life.Meanwhile,the negative effects of social development are increasingly serious,such as the deteriorating ecological environment and the spiritual crisis.A growing number of people are turning their attention to ancient Chinese philosophy,hoping to find the true meaning of a better life.Agreat number of well-known philosophers in China have explored the relationship between individuals,between man and nature.Their thoughts can still offer some enlightenment and inspirations about how to deal with the plight resulting from industrial civilization development and how to take an active attitude towards life.This translation report comes from the fourth chapter of The Path:What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life.Michael Puett,a professor at Harvard University,writes this book in collaboration with Christine Gross-Loh,making a detailed introduction to some ancient philosophers like Confucius,Mencius,Laozi and their main ideas.Under the guidance of the theory of the equivalent effect,the translator explores how to make a translation produce the same effect on the target readers at lexical,syntactic and textual levels respectively.Equivalence refers to the effect of information on the recipient,namely,all the understanding and feelings the receiver can receive,including the main spirit,specific facts,and artistic conception.Some major findings from this report are summarized as follows:(1)At the lexical level,the translator should avoid the literal translation and reproduce cultural connotations hidden in culture-loaded words.(2)At the syntactic level,it is necessary for the translator to find the sources of quotations and the original Chinese expressions by way of back translation.As for complex sentences,the translator needs to divide and restructure the whole sentence by way of division and combination.(3)At the textual level,the translator should pay attention to the textual cohesion and employ the strategies of ellipsis,repetition and amplification to make the translation natural and explicit.The translator has a deeper understanding of the flexible use of various translation strategies as well as ancient Chinese philosophy through this translation practice.It is hoped that this report can provide some useful reference to the translation practice and research of similar texts.