Study On The Translation Of Ceramic Decorative Designs From The Perspective Of Cultural Equivalence

This thesis chooses two ceramic monographs as its analytic objects: Ming Ceramics in the British Museum(MCBM), and Studies of the Collections of China’s National Museum: Ming Ceramics(MC). The former’s writer, Jessica Harrison-Hall, is a British ceramic expert who is deeply interested in Chinese ceramics. MC is written in English and ceramic wares referred in the book are made in Ming Dynasty. The latter is composed by Chinese ceramic experts and is written in Chinese. There are many differences in the descriptions of ceramic decoration between the two books, which are classified by the author into four groups after careful comparison and analysis. They are: false descriptions vs. right descriptions, obfuscation vs. explication, descriptiveness vs. definition, and transliteration. Based on that, the author takes Eugene Nida’s equivalence theory as reference and puts forward with cultural equivalence. From that point of view, the author tries to value and revise some of the descriptions in the book MCBM.At first glance, this thesis seems to be irrelative with translation. What’s more, the two books involved are in a relationship of parallel texts, rather than a relationship of source text(ST) and target text(TT). However, the author thinks that the conclusion made from the comparison of the descriptive differences in the two books is of great importance to the development of ceramic translation.First of all, in the historical background of China opening up to the outside world, cultural communication has become the most charming aspect of Sino-foreign communication. Ceramics, a symbol of the long and splendid history of China, the beloved of both Chinese and foreigners, definitely show great cultural significance. It is imperative to cultivate a specialized field for ceramic translation; meanwhile, the fact that ceramic translation is totally ignored is rather embarrassing. This thesis pioneers in the study of ceramic translation, and the author hopes to show people this forgotten field by this thesis.Secondly, the academic community has launched some discussions about ceramic translation. Nevertheless, those discussions are limited for this or that reason, more or less. For example, those discussions are discussing translation of a certain or given word, overlooking the overall situation of ceramic translation. The most eye-catching limitation is that, those discussions, which are said to be about ceramic translation, seldom or never involve ceramic materials written in English. However, that’s the highlight of this thesis: comparing the different descriptions between two ceramic monographs, one in English and one in Chinese, then making the conclusion.Finally, the four kinds of descriptive differences in this thesis is the product of comparison of two authoritative ceramic monographs, which can be the navigation light of translators trekking on the long road of translation. Thus they can get to know how English-speakers describe the ceramics in English, avoiding working behind closed doors and avoiding those mistakes Englishmen have made.