An English-Chinese Translation Report On A Short History Of The Mongols(Chapters 5-6)

This paper is an English-Chinese translation report.The text that has been translated is A Short History of the Mongols written by the American historian,George Lane.Published in 2018,it describes the whole history of Mongol empire ranging from its establishment to fall,involving the Mongol conquest,its cultural shock and integration,and its inner operation.Two chapters(Chapter 5 and Chapter 6)are selected to translate,which mainly introduce the history of Chaghadaids and Mongols' life in Iran.The words of source text total up to almost 19000,and the words in this whole translation amount to over30000.The source text is a Mongolian historical text,and the translation difficulties lie in three aspects in translation process: a large number of terms;complex sentence structures and lots of long and difficult sentences;a strong color of nationality and various language styles.Based on the theory of Reiss,the text type of original text and its style have been analyzed in depth in this report.Since this source text bears various terms,flexible sentence patterns,and special historical writing styles,the machine translation handles improperly for this kind of text in the terms and long sentences.Therefore,this report suggests that some translation rules and methods must be used in translating:(1)footnotes and in-text annotation can be used to explain some Mongol terms;(2)flexible use of conversion and extension makes the meaning of words get the most appropriate transformations;(3)amplification and omission are flexible methods in translation,which contribute to optimizing the language structures and strengthening effects of expression;(4)division in translation can split some parts in the complex sentences in translating in order to make translation smooth and accurate.The reconstruction makes the translation accord with linguistic habits of target readers and improves the readability of translation;(5)for style,in order to restore the style of source text,corresponding of style can be used to imitate the styleof source text in translating,and in terms of the differences between source language and target language in language structures and expressions,recasting of style can be used to enhance the readability of translation.