A Report On C-E Translation Of A Panorama Of Xiangxi(Excerpts)

This report is based on the C-E translation of A Panorama of Xiangxi(Excerpts)which depicts the customs and traditional handicrafts in Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Xiangxi(Xiangxi will be used for short in this thesis).By reading the source text,the readers will not only get basic information on various handicrafts,which are strongly connected to important customs of this region,but also will feel the charm of its handicraft culture,and better understand the real life of its people.There are many culturally-loaded words about names of traditional handicrafts which are described by a large number of four-word idioms.Furthermore,for the purpose of generating publicity,a great many documents and historical materials are cited with flexible and exaggerated language,all of which makes good use of cultural allusions.Therefore,the source text contains a lot of implicit information for the translation task.After carefully analyzing the features of the text with the help of Newmark's Text Typology,the translator adopts Skopos Theory to guide this translation project with corresponding translation strategies and methods for specific translation difficulties.In this translation practice,it is important not only to reproduce the source text faithfully to the greatest extent,but also to make the target language readings understandable and acceptable,so as to achieve intercultural communication.To accomplish this,firstly,this report analyzes material culturally-loaded words of Xiangxi handicrafts,such as Silankarp,paper-cut,batik,and woodcarving,as well as linguistic culturally-loaded words,such as four-character idioms.Then,the translator uses transliteration,literal translation,free translation,transliteration and transliteration with amplification or annotation to translate these culturally-loaded words.For the sentences with parataxis,the translator adopts division and word order adjustment to translate.Moreover,explicit translation is adopted due to implicit information in the source text.This report consists of an introduction,four chapters and a conclusion.The introduction presents the background,purpose and significance of the translation task.Chapter One narrates contents and features of the source text.Chapter Two describes pre-translation,while-translation and post-translation.Chapter Three,the mostimportant part of this report,analyzes specific translation cases at the lexical,syntactic and discourse levels,under the application of the three rules of Skopos Theory.This chapter also gives details on adopting translation principles and methods,according to the problems encountered in the process of translation.Chapter Four focuses on task reflections on major findings I have got and problems I met with during the process of translation,especially the experience in translating words featured with Xiangxi handicrafts and culture.Finally,the last part makes a conclusion on the translation task as a whole.The translator hopes,through this translation practice,to improve her own translation ability,so as to contribute her part in promoting the dissemination of Xiangxi culture.