A Practice Report On Chinese-English Translation Of A Study Of The Chinese Language Foundation Of The Chinese Culture (Excerpts)

Language boasts rich cultural connotation.It not only serves as a tool for cultural exchange and inheritance,but also an important symbol of a country and national culture.Chinese language is of vital importance in Chinese culture.The translation of Chinese culture can enable more readers to better understand it.Entrusted by Professor Yang Yingfa,I finished the translation of the first two chapters of A Study of the Chinese Language Foundation of the Chinese Culture.The English version of the source text will be published by Huashan Literature and Art Press in the second half of2020.Taking Chinese language as the main research object,the book mainly introduces the origin of Chinese language and Chinese characters,and their impact on Chinese culture.The type of the source text is informative text,which emphasizes veracity and accuracy,and accordingly the target text should convey the original content accurately and faithfully.There are great differences in language habits between Chinese and English,so the superficial rigid correspondence is not suitable for the translation.The Functional Equivalence Theory proposed by Nida focuses on the natural equivalence of translation and emphasizes the response of target language readers.Therefore,I choose Functional Equivalence Theory as the guiding theory of this translation practice to discuss the feasibility and its guiding significance in the process of Chinese-English cultural translation.This report is divided into five parts: task description,process description,theoretical foundation,case study and conclusion.Based on the guidance of Functional Equivalence Theory,I conduct in-depth analysis from the lexical,syntactic and textual levels with specific examples.At the lexical level,transliteration,annotation and literal translation are applied to deal with time,culture-loaded words and four-character Chinese idioms.At the syntactic level,omission,amplification,integration and conversion are used to deal with long and complex sentences,classical Chinese and parallelism sentences.At the textual level,translation methods of substitution,inversion and amplification are adopted to deal with the cohesion and coherence of a text.Through this translation practice,I have a deeper understanding of cultural translation.In the process of translation,in order to realize functional equivalence,professional language skills and rich cultural knowledge are of great significance.At the same time,I hope this translation practice can provide references and ideas for cultural translation.