A Practice Report On The C-E Translation Of Biography Of He Shen(Chapters 1-4)

Biography of He Shen is a systematically historical book,written by the Chinese writer Zhang Tiecheng.The book mainly introduces the life deeds of the Qing official—He Shen.When referring to He Shen,people will match the image of“fatness”,“ignorance” and “brutality” with him.As time passes,these images have been deeply rooted and spread to some foreign Chinese-history lovers.But in fact,in the real history,He Shen is a “handsome” and “intelligent” man of subtle and refined sensibility.Therefore,it is necessary for us to restore and reproduce his real image,and spread it to foreign readers.This report begins with a brief introduction to the C-E translation of Biography of He Shen(Chapters 1-4),including the essential description of its project background,purpose and significance of the chosen topic as well as the project arrangement.In the case analysis part,the report takes skopos theory as the theoretical support,first explains its application in the paper and then analyzes the translation cases according to the three principles,namely “purpose principle”,“coherence principle” and “loyalty principle”.This book is both a historical and biographical text and thus has its unique characteristics in professional terms and writing style.In view of the documentary and literary characteristics of the biographical translation,the translator launches the discussion from “lexical translation”,“syntactical translation” and “textual translation”.For word translation,the translator applies some translation methods such as“transliteration with interpretation”,“idiomatic translation” and “paraphrase” to ensure the fidelity of translation;for sentence translation,the translator adopts combination,conversion and omission to enhance the logicality and coherence;for passage translation,the translator enhances the coherence and readability by “adjusting language order” and “style conversion”.All in all,when translating biographical texts,the translator should try to retain the historical characteristics of Chinese culture and avoid the loss of cultural information in the original text.In addition,the cultural expectations of the target readers should also be fully considered in the translation,so that the translation can finally achieve the translation purpose under the premise of faithful information and coherent meaning.By this translation practice,the author not only intends to let more foreign readers understand Chinese history and further promote Chinese culture to the world,but also to provide learning and reference materials for researchers who are engaged or interested in translation related to biographical text.