A Report On The E-C Translation Of A History Of Political Thought (Chapter 1)

This is a report on the English-Chinese translation of A history of Political Thought by Janet Coleman treating those political theorists most frequently discussed in university courses dealing with the western political history from the ancient Greeks to the sixteenth-century Renaissance.Under the guidance of the relevance theory raised by Sperber & Wilson,Chapter 1“Ancient Athenian Democracy” is selected especially as a research target with an emphasis on the two hundred years of ancient Athenian democracy interwoven with etymological analysis,fluctuations of wars and detailed records of how to implement democracy.With quantities of technical terms,long and sophisticated sentences,its difficulty lies in how to express the philosophical or political conceptions,ideas and principles accurately so as to make it understood by the common target readers.The report is intended to provide enlightenment to such fields as the expression of ancient Athenian political concepts,the analysis and translation of long and sophisticated sentences by means of liberal and literal translation strategies in specific including structure-borrowing,subtraction,transliteration plus annotation,corresponding translation and adaptive translation etc.The report herein consists of six chapters.The translator first gives an abbreviated introduction of this translation program and its significance.Then it is the description of the source and target text,followed by the process of translation including pre-translation,while-translation and post-translation.Next,the translator demonstrates the relevance theory in detail,closely followed by offering some case analyses,portraying the specific translation strategies and techniques on political texts.Finally,the translator concludes a revelation of translation practice in the whole process.