A Report On Translation Of Pioneers In The Zhongguan Cun (Preface,Chapter 3,12) From The Perspective Of Translation Equivalence

This paper aims to describe the translation process,analyze the five major difficulties occurring in translation of the Preface,Chapter 3 and 12 of Pioneers in the Zhonguan Cun--selection of verbs,translation of modifiers,translation of Chinese idioms as well as choice of subjects and translation of rhetoric,and explore corresponding solutions to those problems from the perspective of J.C.Catford’s translation equivalence.To achieve translation equivalence,five strategies has been proposed in this paper to solve the above five problems respectively in light of the translation equivalence theory by J.C.Catford.To represent the vividness of verbs: Chinese verbs and English verbs are different in that the former are rich in meaning and have a wide application.The translator should carefully consider the connotation before determining the English verbs which should be capable of making sentence lively and vivid;and the collocation between subject and predicate should also be carefully considered before selecting an English predicate verb.To deliver the exact implication of modifiers: the translator should firstly determine whether the Chinese modifiers should be retained or rejected in English and then think out exact expressions to substitute the original connotation.To make the implied meanings of Chinese idioms explicit: cultural discrepancy of Chinese and English leads to the difficult understanding of many Chinese idioms by foreign readers,so the translator makes their implied meanings explicit for them to read smoothly.To select English subjects flexibly:since the Chinese sentences can work without a subject,different to English ones in which subjects are indispensable,the translator abandons the Chinese subjects in most cases and works out a new subject that accords with the English sentence structure and the context,or thinks out a definite English subject for those no-subject Chinese sentences.To equivalently reproduce the rhetoric: figures of speech shows the literariness and aesthetics of a work,but some of the rhetoric in Chinese is hard to be understood by foreign readers if translated literally.