A Report On The Chinese Translation Of North China Daily News As Exemplified By The Reports On Dewey,Russell And Monroe

Published from 1850 to 1951,North China Daily News(in C hinese: Zilin Xibao)was the most influential English newspaper in modern C hina with the longest history and the widest circulatio n.Based on the translation of the news reports on three prominent foreign philosophers,Dewey,Russell and Monroe,this study analyzes the text features of modern English newspaper,puts forward some translation strategies under the guidance of Skopos Theory proposed by Hans Vermeer,and applies multiple or adaptive translation techniques according to the original form,meaning and style,which aims at offering some suggestions on translation of historical documents.The source text involves a variety of themes,including C hinese and western culture,social problems,educational reform,and economic situation.The titles vary in forms with concise ones and rhetorical expressions containing abundant information.In terms of vocabulary,there are both proper nouns and culture-loaded words.Syntactic analysis is carried out by due consideration of sentence variety such as ellipsis,inversion,complex phrases and long sentences.The process of comprehensive narration with argumentation constructs impressive source text implying different grounds of different journalists.According to the three principles in Skopos Theory,the author analyzes the translation texts and translation strategy from three perspectives.In translating proper names and culture-loaded words,the author follows the principle of skopos rule and adopts translation methods such as transliteration,free translation and exegetic translation to achieve the accuracy of translation on the lectures by the prominent western philosophers.In terms of translation of headlines and compound sentences,the author follows the fidelity rule and chooses methods such as free translation,literal translation and linear translation,thus ensuring that the target language would be faithful and coherent to the source text.As for phrases and complex sentences,the author follows the coherence rule and takes diversified methods,such as four-word forms,adjustment,addition,deletion and restructuring,to make the translation readable.When confronted with other unusual modern history texts,such as the incongruity of proper names and polysemy,the author takes multiple and adaptive translation methods like amplification,adaption and supplementation.In addition,the author tries to achieve the equivalence of form,meaning and language style between the source text and the target text as closely as possible in combination with the specific historical and cultural context,so as to convey the information accurately,concisely and smoothly.