A Report On The Translation Of Anecdotes Occurring In Chang’an

The text selected for this report is the first four volumes of Anecdotes Occurring in Chang’an(《西京杂记》).The text is very distinctive of Chinese culture,and the contents recorded in the book span from history,literature,architecture,folklore and other aspects.The translator uses this book as a text to make a small contribution to the dissemination and promotion of Chinese culture and to the development of foreign translations of the canonical texts.The text is more than 2000 years old,and most of the things recorded in the book have been lost or changed,which to a certain extent makes it difficult to verify its authenticity and these things’ specific reference;at the same time,the translation of many culturally loaded words and cultural imagery words also faces challenges due to the linguistic differences between Chinese and English and the historical and cultural background.In order to better communicate the cultural imagery in the original text,the translator,guided by Newmark’s theory of communicative and semantic translation,explores how to use the translation methods of literal and free translation as well as translation techniques such as division and omission to achieve the complementary use of communicative and semantic translation in the translation process,so as to realize the translation purpose and improve the translation quality of the text.This report consists of following five parts: the first part is introduction,which introduces background of the selected book and analyzes the text content;the second part describes translation process;the third one elaborates theoretical basis,introducing Newmark’s text type theory and semantic and communicative translation theory applied to translation practice;the fourth part is case analysis of translation practice based on this theory;the fourth part is a case study of translation practice based on this theory;and the fifth part summarizes this report.