A Study On Translation Strategies Of Historical Works

In the era of cultural pluralism,studying the global dissemination of Chinese historical works helps to show its influence and contribution to the thoughts of people around the world.This thesis,from a macro perspective,studies the translation of Chinese historical classics after the founding of the People's Republic of China.Taking the reform and opening-up as the boundary,this thesis studies the translation of Chinese historical classics by translators at home and abroad in different periods.This thesis analyses the joint action of various factors affecting the purpose of translation on the translation strategies.From the micro perspective,the cultural elements of the official position,the geographic name,the unit of measurement,the excruciation and other cultural words in Shiji are selected as the research objects.The translated works of Yang Xianyi,Gladys Yang and William H.Nienhauser,Jr.are selected for comparative analysis.It is found that Yang's translation was mainly influenced by the prevailing ideology in the 1950 s,and mainly adopted domesticating strategy.For culture-loaded words,fluency and readability were the main factors in the translation.With the development of Sinology,Nienhauser's translation was characterized by its academy and preciseness.Therefore,in the translation of cultural words,foreignization with a large number of annotations and textual research was the main strategy of Nienhauser.Combining the macro and micro perspectives,it can lead to the conclusion that the purpose of translation produced by the co-action of the initiator's expectations,the translator's translation thoughts and the audience in a specific historical period has a great influence on the choice of translation strategies.Under the guidance of the Skopos Theory,we can clearly see the reasons for different characteristics of the translated text in a specific historical period.Before the reform and opening-up,domestic translators mainly adopted domesticating strategy,focusing on the translation of cultural words;after the reform and opening-up,the requirement of a large quantity of translated books made translators pay less attention to the translation of culture-loaded elements.On the contrary,before the reform and opening-up,foreign translators mainly adopted domesticatingstrategy,but after that,they turned to rigorous foreignizing strategy.Based on the Skopos Theory,the translation of historical books study and the comparative analysis of the translated versions are conducive to resolving the dispute between domestication and foreignization,and play a good complementary role in translation criteria and translation criticism.Dynamic changes and flexibility of translation strategy are greatly displayed by the study of dissemination of Chinese historical works.