A Report On The Translation Of Life Among The Chinese (Chapter 13) And Journeys In North China (Chapter 17)

This report is a review on the translation of Chapter 13 of Life among the Chinese, written by R. S. Maclay, published in 1861 and Chapter 17 of Journeys in North China, written by Alexander Williamson, published in 1970. Life among the Chinese mainly describes China’s geography, religious beliefs, historical culture, governmental agencies, laws, and etc, as well as making meticulous and detailed account of the Fuzhou customs. Journeys in North China mainly narrates the author’s travel in northern China such as Shandong, Chihli, Shaanxi, Shanxi provinces, which records the Chinese character, customs, geographical features, etc. As an important component of the Overseas Chinese studies, the two books integrate the thoughts and feelings of the western observers and shape their view of China in the late Qing Dynasty.Chapter 13 of Life among the Chinese describes the missionaries who set up schools in Fuzhou, covering a large number of western religious culture and religious terms. Its Language is dominated by narration and combined with comment. Chapter 17 of Journeys in North China describes the travels of missionaries in Shanxi area in plain language of narration, covering various Chinese folk customs. In view of the language features, the author takes Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory as guiding principle for this translation practice, trying to make the translation achieve "the closest natural equivalence"This translation report mainly includes five parts:the first part is the translation project introduction, including text source, text introduction, and stylistic feature; the second part introduces Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory; the third part is pre-translation process, including study of translation text, researching and reading parallel texts as well as related articles, and team work; the fourth part is a case analysis, which introduces the translation difficulties and the translation methods from the levels of words, sentences, text, and culture respectively; in the fifth part, the author summarizes the experience and deficiency in translation practice, and points out suggestions for future improvement.On the macro guidance of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory, this translation report adopts the literal translation, literal translation with notes, free translation, transliteration and other translation methods. The author not only considers language factors, but also cultural factors when translating so as to make the translation appropriate, natural, and equivalent as far as possible by taking advantages of target language. Therefore, the author hopes this translation and report are helpful for future translation and studies on such old books by foreign language.