| The Chinese Academic Translation Projects aim to make the essence of Chinese culture and the Chinese values accessible to the world through the international publication of excellent Chinese academic works.The author has participated in the translation of A Study of the Rural Control System in Imperial China,one of the Chinese Academic Translation Projects,which was headed by Professor Li Ke.Guided by George Steiner’s hermeneutic translation theory,the author has solved the key and difficult problems in this practice,and then written the translation report on the basis of these solutions.The purpose of this report is to provide a methodological reference for translating history-based texts,and to hope the translation and relevant research will promote the dissemination of Chinese culture in the world.This report chooses Section Four of Chapter Three of A Study of the Rural Control System in Imperial China(abridged version)as its translation material.The difficulties of this translation practice result from abundant historical terms with Chinese characteristics and quotations from ancient classics in the source text,which also feature non-subject sentences and multi-verb structures syntactically,as well as hidden cohesive relations at the textual level.Based on hermeneutic translation theory,this report begins with the initial trust in the source text and the author’s translation ability,and describes various translation methods including cutting,annotation and substitution adopted to overcome difficulties in lexical,syntactic or textual aspects throughout the phases of aggression,incorporation and compensation.It also reveals various concrete annotation methods.This practice enables the author to find that hermeneutic translation theory can be applied to the translation of history-based texts full of culture-loaded words and quotations from ancient literatures,and that the information compensated in the target text should depend on the translation purpose and the internal context. |
PDF Full Text Request