A Report On The English (abridged) Translation Of A New History Of The Five Dynasties

Chinese classics are one of the carriers of Chinese traditional culture.The translation of Chinese classics is conducive to spreading Chinese culture.The translation project of this translation report is A New History of the Five Dynasties compiled by Ouyang Xiu.The translation is completed with the reference to grammatical complexity.We put emphasis on the ratio of characters to words,lexical density,grammatical intricacy and grammatical complexity,intending to solve the following problems: 1)How can we narrow down the information gap between the source and target text of A New History of the Five Dynasties with the reference to grammatical complexity? 2)with the reference to grammatical complexity,how can we make the translation style of classic more in line with Watson's?The study found that: 1)After several times of revisions,the ratio of characters to words of each chapter fluctuates within the range of [1.76,2.07].The ratio of characters to words of the overall translated text is 1.84,which is nearly close to Watson's translation(1.87).That means the translation can better reflect the information of source text.A New History of the Five Dynasties has a refined language and a high proportion of culture-loaded words.If a large number of simple sentences are adopted in translation,the grammatical complexity will be low.Hence,the information in translation may be missing and the degree of colloquialism will be high.When translating every single sentence,we should narrow down the information gap between the source and target text.Therefore,there will occasionally be situations where the ratio of characters to words is slightly higher,but it does not affect the ratio of characters to words of the overal text to be in a reasonable interval.2)Research data show that with the reference to grammatical complexity,the translation style can be close to the selected translator's style.After correctly reflecting the information of the source text,the author puts the emphasis on the revised translation at three levels: lexical,syntax and discourse level.The revised standards refer to the lexical density,grammatical intricacy,grammatical complexity and average clauses number of The History of the Former Han Dynasty translated by Watson,with the number of 10.19,1.24,8.23 and 2.53 respectively.These four indicators reflect that the translator adopts more complex grammar to a certain extent,which guides the author to subconsciously imitate the translation styles of well-known foreign translators.After several times of revisions and improvements,the grammatical complexity of this translation is close to Watson's translation,with values of 10.69,1.30,8.24 and 2.38 respectively.The data show that with the reference to grammatical complexity,the style of the translated text can be closer to the style of the selected translator.With the reference to grammatical complexity,this study explores how to narrow down the information gap between source and target text,and how to make the translation style of classic more in line with well-known translator's.With the help of a series of data analysis,the translation style of A New History of the Five Dynasties is presented directly and scientifically in the form of data,which makes some supplements to the research on translation of Chinese classics.With the reference to grammatical complexity,the translated sentences can be more diversified and complicated,and the translated text can be closer to the written features of the target language,which has a certain significant reference for the translation practice of Chinese classics.