Translating The Cambridge Companion To Modern Chinese Culture

Although, with the extension of globalization, English-Chinese cultural translation(ECCT) is thriving and increasingly more Western cultural texts are being translated intoChinese, ECCT so far is still limited by a lack of systemic and functional considerations andrandomness in method selection. Meanwhile, although studies of it have made considerableachievements, studies so far are not systemic enough in the object of study and methodology.Applying Jia Zhengchuan’s Dialectical Systemic Philosophy of Translation as a heuristic andGerman functionalist theories of translation as a basis, taking the present author’s translationof a chapter from The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture (CCMCC) as anexample, and employing an integrated methodology combining deduction and exemplification,this thesis therefore attempts to explore the nature, features, rules and methods of CCMCCtranslation so as demonstrate a German functionalism-based systemic approach to ECCT.As the thesis shows, CCMCC translation is essentially a dialectical system andpurposeful activity, consisting nonlinearly of such components as Chinese translator, Englishsource text and its writer, Chinese target text and its reader, rules and methods of translation,conditioned by and functioning in a particular context, and exhibiting itself as a multiphaseprocess of operation. It is characterized in terms of the relationships between its differentcomponents, between it and its environment, and between its different phases by dialecticalinterconnectedness (especially the dialectical equivalence between the source and target texts)and by target text functionality (especially its referential function). Among its various aspects,the purpose of the Chinese translator or readers (i.e., to present or appreciate the image of theChinese culture in the eyes of the Westerners) directly influence the rules and methods oftranslation. CCMCC translation should successively follow the rule of dialectical dynamicityand purposefulness, the rule of dialectical openness and coherence, and the rule of integrityand fidelity. It should, by adopting the dialectical systemic meta-method (i.e., the method ofmanaging methods), systemically understand and appropriately apply the various translationmethods and techniques such as documentary translation (especially interlineal, literal, andphilological translation) and instrumental translation (especially equi-functional translation).In the translation of CCMCC, the present author basically maintains a German Functionalism based systemic view of translation and follows the corresponding rules and methods oftranslation.The thesis may be practically and theoretically relevant to ECCT. On one hand, it may becapable of direct application to ECCT so as to help to solve the problem of lacking systemicand functional considerations and randomness in method selection. On the other hand, it maycompensate for the inadequate integrity of current studies in terms of scope andmethodologies.