A Report On The Translation Of Confucianism:A Short Introduction(Excerpts)

After thousands of years of development,Confucianism is still full of vitality and plays a vital role in the cultural exchange between China and the West.This translation report is based on three selected chapters from a foreign work,namely Confucianism: A Short Introduction.The selected chapters focus on Confucianism’s ideas on education,self-cultivation,and its influence on East Asian countries.In the process of translation,the translator is guided by Nida’s functional equivalence theory.According to Nida,meaning is more important than form in the translation.Instead of being limited by the form of the source text,the translation should reproduce the content of the source language in flexible ways.As an academic work,the source text features formal words,varied sentences,and objective contents.Therefore,the translator analyzes and solves the translation process’ s difficulties from lexical and syntactic levels by applying different translation techniques,such as the extension of word meaning,part of speech conversion,fusion,reversing,cutting,etc.The report is divided into five parts: the first part focuses on the background and significance of the report;the second part introduces the selected source text and the translation process,including preparation before translation,the difficulties encountered in translation and improvement of the translation;the third part is theoretical basis,consisting of the introduction to functional equivalence theory and its application;the fourth part is the case analysis,which discusses the difficulties in translation and the corresponding solutions;the fifth part is the summary of the gains and shortcomings in the process of translation as well as its enlightenment for the future translation.The translator hopes to use this translation practice to help people understand the overseas dissemination of Confucianism and provide some reference and inspiration for translating the same type of texts.