A Report On The Translation Of World History: Relations Between The East And The West In The 20th Century(Excerpts)

As Chinese culture is going global, translation of historical books has attracted more attention from scholars. Currently, C-E translation or relevant studies of historical books mainly focus on ancient Chinese historical works, such as Records of the Grand Historian and The Book of History.However, there are few C-E translation or studies of contemporary or modern historical works.This report discusses C-E translation of historical text based on potential difficulties the translator encountered as well as strategies adopted and experience gained in the process of translation.The original text of this translation practice is Chapter Thirteen and Chapter Fourteen of World History: Relations Between the East and the West in the 20 th Century, a Chinese non-fiction work which has no English version. These two chapters are “The Dissolution of the Soviet Union and the End of the Cold War” and “The Aftermath and the Legacy of the Cold War”, revealing major historical events such as the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that have influenced relations between the East and the West.This report falls into four parts, including introduction to the translation project, description of the translating process, case study of translating techniques and conclusion, and the third part is the core of the report. After analyzing lexical, syntactic and narrative features of the text, the author discusses translating strategies applied under the guidance of faithfulness and smoothness by presenting examples and expounding on them, hoping that more people will pay attention to the translation of world history books and the report might provide some reference for translation in this field.The report suggests that since history books narrate historical facts, on the one hand, they are usually written in formal words and with many historical terms; on the other hand, they use plain language of great logic and clarity. Therefore, the principle of faithfulness and smoothness turns out to be very feasible in guiding the translation of the historical text. To be faithful to ideas of the original text and be fluent, natural in the translation, the author adopts translating techniques including back-translation, conversion of parts of speech, division, combination and inversion.The report also indicates that an earnest and responsible attitude is required for translators of thehistorical text. The report reveals some potential difficulties the author might encounter in the translation, and instructs the author to work with a team and to efficiently use various translating tools such as search engines, dictionaries and corpora.