A Report On The E-C Translation Of Religious Elements In England In The Age Of Austen (Excerpt) Under Steiner’s Hermeneutic Translation Theory

This report is based on the translation project the author participated in.Under the guidance of George Steiner’s fourfold motion of hermeneutic translation theory,the author analyzes and studies the translation of religious elements in the fifth chapter of Prof.Jeremy Black’s new book England in the Age of Austen.Religious elements,as an integral part of culture,have influenced people’s speech habits throughout history.Religious cultures of different ethnic groups influence each other and thus hinder translation activities.For the author,the following difficulties are encountered in the translation process:first,without the support of historical and cultural background,the translator’s understanding is hindered when reading the original text;second,due to the different emphasis of English and Chinese,such as English focuses on hypotaxis and Chinese emphasizes parataxis,the translator faces difficulties in how to produce idiomatic expressions on the basis of understanding;third,in the process of translation,it’s easy for the translator to avoid difficulties by employing direct translation when confronted with incomprehensible information.However,a good translation should seek balance,and it is also a challenge to select a translation method to provide restitution in the translation process.In the author’s opinion,the fourfold motion of Steiner’s hermeneutic translation theory has certain guiding significance for this translation practice for the reason that hermeneutics lies in“interpretation”and“understanding”,which are the prerequisites for bilingual conversion and the foundation for translation.The fourfold motion of Steiner’s hermeneutic translation theory--“trust”,“aggression”,“incorporation”and“restitution”can be the underlying logic of translation activities.Accordingly,the translator first trusts the readability and translation value of the original text;secondly,the translator invades the original text,crosses the barrier of understanding to feel the linguistic environment and cultural information of the original text;then,in the“incorporation”step,the translator places the“heterogeneous”expressions encountered in the previous step into the translated text,truly translating the understanding into words;in the“restitution”step,the translator adopts effective translation methods to make up for the imbalance between the original text and the translated text,so as to restore the original text as faithfully as possible and present the targeted readers with an unfamiliar and interesting religious scene in 18^th-century England.