A Report On The Chinese-English Translation Of A Thematic Research On Ancient Shangdang(Excerpt)

As one of the most important parts of folk custom and culture,myth,known as a presentation human civilization and records of history,reflects the history,cognitive features and way of thinking of a nation.There have been being many well-known ancients myths since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period in Shangdang area,where is one of the culture areas of typical Chinese myths,and also called the cradle of Chinese myths.Nowadays,considered that culture takes an increasingly important role in comprehensive national power competition,Chinese culture going out to the world is one the important national strategies,it is of great importance to do myths translation in the process of promoting traditional culture.A Thematic Research on Ancient Shangdang written by Professor Wang Jiantang from Chinese department of Changzhi University,is about the myths in ancient Shangdang area,where is the birthplace of many famous myths.The author translated A Geographical Definition of “Ancient Shangdang”,the Administrative counties of “Ancient Shangdang”,the Space-timing Sequence of Generation of Shangdang Myths and Selections of Classification of Shangdang Myths,which record the regional demarcation of Shangdang area since ancient times,the formation of these myths as well as the interpretation of five tales,namely Nvwa Mends the Sky,Shennong Tastes Hundreds of Herbs,Jingwei Fills up the Sea,Houyi Shoots down the Suns,Dayu Tames the Flood and Yugong Moves the Mountains.Domestication and foreignization was first proposed by Schleiermacher,a German translation theorist,and later developed into a theory by Lawrence Venuti,an American translation theorist,in his book the Translator’s Invisibility.Nowadays,whether to choose domestication or foreignization in translation studies is still one of the focuses of discussion.Domestication requires the translator to be close to the reader of the target language and use the expression of the target language to convey information,while foreignization emphasizes the translator to be close to the author of the target language and try to convey the content of the source text.Considering that there are a lot of names of ancient persons,places,and books,and ancient poetry in the source text,when translating A Thematic Research on Ancient Shangdang,the author utilized foreignization strategy and reserves the original style of the source text as much as possible based on the acceptability of the target reader,as for the contents containing Chinese elements,the translator should resort to domestication strategy so as to ensure that Chinese culture can be spread on the basis of the target reader?s understanding towards the translation.There are five parts in this report totally,they are translation task description,translation process description,translation theory,case analysis of the translation and conclusion.The author hopes to give a reference to the translation of Chinese myths and makes a contribution to Chinese culture going global.