A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Zoroastrians:Their Religious Beliefs And Practices(Chapter 4-5) Based On The Theory Of Thick Translation

Since the 1980s,translation research has taken a “cultural turn” and cultural translation has become an important topic in current translation research.In 1993,Appiah proposed the idea of “thick translation”,which provides the theoretical basis for the practice of cultural translation.Thick translation emphasizes translation should pay attention to intentions and cultural differences,and realize thick contextualization of the text.In addition,thick translation presents the culture of the source language to the readers of the translated text by adding annotations or notes,so that they can understand and respect the culture of others,thus promoting the dissemination and communication of multiple cultures.Taking the Chinese translation of Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices as an example,this report explores the application of thick translation in the translation of religious and cultural history texts.Based on the case study method,the report analyzes the important and difficult points in the translation and summarizes its specific strategies to achieve cultural translation.As a result,this paper finds that thick translation can present heterogeneous cultures to target readers in both explicit and implicit ways.The former is mainly realized with symbolic annotations such as in-text notes and footnotes,while the latter is realized by mixing supplementary information into the translation or directly “deforming” the interpretation of the original text.At the same time,when using explicit thick translation,translators should follow the principles of accurate compensatory information and moderate simplicity.In addition,in order to avoid over-annotation,the translation can be complemented by the invisible strategy,and the two complement each other.The author is guided translation practice with the idea of "thick translation" and explores the concrete methods of it in practice,hoping to present different views for the practical application of the theory and to inspire other translators in their translation work of historical documents in the future.