On Translating Of Referential Expressions To Historical Figures

The referential expression to a person is not only a symbol of communication used by people,but also contains a nation's culture,customs,history,language,morality and many other elements.Translating such expressions is not an easy task,especially when it involves referring to multiple historical figures in a scholarly work.This report is based on the English-Chinese translation of the book England and the Hundred Years War.Due to the lack of accuracy and detailed verification of the relevant historical figures in the book,as well as the lack of clear principle of translating Western historical figures' names into Chinese,mistranslation of the names of historical figures or the phenomenon of one-name-to-many-persons appeared in the process of Chinese translation,and this would confuse the target language readers.In the meanwhile,mistranslation of names does not meet the publishing house's criteria for the translation of names.The use of reference theory can help the translator pin down historical figures more accurately.Adding elements of contexts can help determine the historical figures' proper names.Under such guidance,readers can be better integrated into the text so as to get the proper names of historical figures.Under the guidance of the reference theory,this report attempts to solve the problem of one-name-to-many-persons and ambiguous translation of the names of historical figures from the perspective of translating pronouns,proper name and the descriptive phrases referring to historical figures.The author hopes this work can provide reference for other translators,who might meet similar problems in their future tasks.This report is divided into five chapters.Chapter one is the background of the task and briefly introduces the background,significance,requirements of the translation task and the structure of this translation report.Chapter two is a brief introduction to the author's task process in three stages:pre-translation preparation,the process of translation and post-translation modification.Chapter three describes the problems the author encounteredin the course of this translation task and the causes leading to these problems.The Fourth Chapter is the case analysis,which is the essence and key part of this translation report.Based on the practice of translation,the author subdivides the reference of historical figures under the guidance of the theory of reference,and finally determines the proper names of historical figures from the perspective of considering and serving the readers.The fifth chapter is the summary and the author's self-reflection of the translation practice.