A Report On The Translation Of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed( Chapter 5 )by Eric H. Cline

This article is a translation report. The source text of the translation project 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, is authored by archaeologist Eric H. Cline. The book is an academic report of Cline’s latest archaeological research and findings. It reveals a mystery that has bothered scholars of historical and archaeological research for centuries--the fall of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean civilizations. This report is based on the translation of chapter 5 of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.Integrating the practice of the translator and typical examples in the translation, the translation report probes difficulties and corresponding translation methods of the translation project. The translator summarizes three difficulties: culture-loaded words, proper nouns and long sentences. With the guidance of skopos theory, the target reader of the translation is the same with that of the original text, that is, scholars and ordinary readers, which requires the language of the translation be simple, clear and easy for ordinary readers to understand. Besides, by analyzing the text type of the source text which is informative, the translation should be loyal to the source text, concentrate on the delivery of information of the source text, and fully reflect the author’s ideas and reach the communicative purpose of translation. Thus the translator adopts translation methods as annotation, transliteration and division. Transliteration maintains exotic features of names of foreign people and places, annotation helps ordinary readers to have an insight of background information without inquiring on their own and division transforms English grammatical rules into Chinese ones to adapt to the language habits of the Chinese readers.