The Influence Of Cultural Context On English-chinese Translation

The report is based on translation practice of an excerpted part from The Cambridge Historyof China Vol.5, an influential historical book written by Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank,celebrated scholars concentrating on Chinese culture and history. The author’s translation is thefirst three parts of Chapter Eight, which gives an account of the move to the south of the SungDynasty and the reign of Emperor Kao-Tsung. The author completed the translation task under theguidance of the supervisor.It is recognized that the Chinese equivalents of the Chinese proper names concerning persons,places, official titles and so on exists in ancient China in the sources text can be found in theonline encyclopedia such as Wikipedia and books, and they were directly used in the target text.After that, the author checks if these names are widely accepted. Guided by cultural context theory,the author mainly uses domestication and foreignization in the translation process.The report introduces the project and its stylistic features, and analyzes the source text. Itdiscusses the cultural context viewpoints expressed by western scholars. Then the report gives asummary for the different views towards cultural context in China. Furthermore, the reportanalyzes the elements of cultural context in English-Chinese translation and the difficulties thatthe author encounters. By analyzing the domestication and foreignization methods in thetranslation process, the author hopes to offer some worthwhile reference to those translators whoare engaged in translating books about Chinese culture and history written by foreign writers.