A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Through Unexplored Asia (Chapters 1-2)

This thesis is a translation report based on my translation of chapter 1 and part of chapter 2 from the source text of William Jameson Reid’s Through Unexplored Asia. It centers on encyclopedic knowledge on the journey to the western China of the writer and his old friend who proceed to mach forward after encountering difficulties, such as hostility, lack of provision, bad weather etc. This part extensively involves various cultural factors particularly in the description of landform, folk custom, religion, sacrifice, food, costume.The report consists of five parts:introduction of translation project, preparation before translation is done, translation theory, case analysis and the summary of the translation. The first part briefly introduces the source of text and research purpose. The second part mainly focuses on analyzing text characteristics and presenting various methods of referring parallel texts. The third part revolves around translation theory. Based on the content and characteristics, the writer choose Hans J. Vermeer’s Skopos Theory as the translation guidance with the purpose of communicative function in target text. As the core of the whole report, the forth part pours over case studies at the level of vocabulary and structural analysis. The writer classifies the words from the perspective of culture and taken different translation methods according to the specific case, including literal translation, free translation, transliteration, translation with notes and so on. In structural analysis, the paper emphasizes on the translation of passive sentence, inverted sentence, and long sentence attempting to conform to native language. The last part shares the gains and experience in the translation process, analyze the existing problems and inadequacies, and points out the future direction.The translation practice belongs to documentary travel notes concerning diversified cultural factors, which challenges a lot. Under the guidance of Hans J. Vermeer’s Skopos Theory, the writer related the skopos rule, coherence rule, fidelity rule with practice to convey the information of the original text precisely and faithfully. The author hopes this translation and report are helpful for trans-culture communication, providing valuable sinology study to Chinese and overseas scholars.