A Report On Translating Xinyang Shadow Play

Luoshan shadow play is included in the national intangible culture heritage list in2008. Shadow play is the cultural essence of the Chinese nation, and the text recording information about shadow play is an important way for the international community to get to know about Chinese folk culture, showing the world Chinese intangible culture heritages and disseminating Chinese folk culture. However, there is no text of English version aimed at introducing shadow plays in Xinyang City. As for the practice, it is the first time to translate the text of shadow plays in The Book about Xinyang (Volume2) into English. In the report, the author discusses some translation skills fit for publicity of Chinese folk culture worldwide under the guidance of functionalist skopos theory, so as to solve problems in Chinese-English translation on Chinese folk culture and explore some effective translation strategies or methods. The author intends to disseminate the local culture of Xinyang city, and promote Chinese excellent culture to go out to the world. Meanwhile, the process of translation and study can improve the author’s ability in translation as well.The author employs functionalist skopos theory as the theoretical guidance for the translation practice. Skopos theory focuses above all on the purpose of the translation, which determines the translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate result. As for the translation practice, the author aims at inputting foreign culture into the target language. Therefore, the author adopts foreignization strategy to deal with the culture-loaded words in the text of Xinyang shadow play. The author takes sentences from the text as examples to discuss the difficulties and methods of solving problems in the translation practice, and analyzes the application of various translation methods, including literal translation, literal translation plus explanation, transliteration, adopting Chinese pinyin, pinyin plus explanation, and pinyin plus notes, etc. The author tries to overcome the obstacles caused by the difference between Chinese and English cultures, select proper translation methods, and settle the problems when translating Chinese culture-loaded words, so as to bring the cultural essence of the Chinese nation to the world, making China better known to the world.The report consists of five chapters:1) introduction,2) theoretical guidance for the translation practice,3)task description,4)discussion on translating the Chinese text of Xinyang shadow play under the guidance of skopos theory,5) summary of the translation practice.