A C-E Translation Project Report On Memory And Inheritance:the Stories In The Disappearing Ancient Villages(Excerpts):Difficulties In And Tactics For The Translation Of Culture Specific Items In Ancient Village Texts

In recent years,the protection and inheritance of ancient village culture have become the focus of the government under the implementation of the Rural Revitalization Strategy.As one of the means to protect and inherit ancient village culture,the translation of ancient village culture becomes a new way to protect and activate ancient villages.At the same time,it provides a new access for western people to learn about Chinese traditional culture.This translation report is selected from the book Memory and Inheritance: The Stories in the Disappearing Ancient Villages,published by China Machine Press in 2019.This translation report focuses on solving difficulties caused by a large number of culture specific items and then comes up with corresponding translation strategies.Culture specific items refer to cultural expressions that thrive in a specific national cultural background and are laden with unique cultural connotation and function.Such cultural expression is not limited to words,phrases and sentences.Based on Nida’s(2007)classification of culture specific items,the translator divides the difficulties of this translation report into the following two categories:(1)Difficulties in translating social culture specific items;(2)Difficulties in translating linguistic culture specific items.Guided by Liu Miqing’s cultural comprehension,cultural interpretation in semantics and cultural representation theory in his Cultural Translation Theory,the report carries out semantic comprehension and interpretation of social culture and focuses on reproducing aesthetic experience of language culture to readers.Through the following compensatory strategies,the vacancy of cultural information and connotation can be filled,and the linguistic and cultural aesthetics can be reproduced in the target language:(1)phrase structure conversion,literal translation plus annotation,transliteration plus explanation and explanation to make up cultural connotations of social culture specific items;(2)transformation with image,specification with image,deculturation,substitution and explanation to reproduce the aesthetic experience of linguistic culture specific items.It was proved that the above translation solutions can make up for the loss of historical information and cultural connotation in ancient village texts so as to achieve inter-cultural exchange and cultural transmission.The author hopes that this report can provide inspiration and reference for the translation of culture specific items in other ancient village texts.