A Report On English-Chinese Translation Of The Pursuit Of Italy:A History Of A Land,Its Regions And Their Peoples(Chapter One)

This paper is a translation report.The source text of the translation project is excerpted from The Pursuit of Italy:A History of a Land,its Regions and their Peoples written by David Gilmour.The work was published in 2012,and there is no Chinese translation version up to now.This is one of the reasons why the translator chooses the work as the translation text.David Gilmour is one of Britain’s most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers.His work The Pursuit of Italy:A History of a Land,its Regions and their Peoples traces the whole history of the Italian peninsula in a wonderfully readable style.It also shows that Italy’s glory comes not from a unified national identity,but from its regions.This work reflects the historical changes of Italy,and multi-national characteristics,which plays a very important role in understanding the culture,history and geography of the Italy.The author of this report encountered some difficulties in the translation process,such as the terminology of the geographies,the Italian culture-loaded words,the long sentences and punctuation mark of dashes in sentences.The geography terminology and Italian culture-loaded word and the Italian language make the translator confused.It is to analyze the punctuation mark dashes and some long sentences also make the translator confused.The translator needs to spend a lot of time analyzing the modifiers in sentences,so as to translate the sentences in line with the Chinese expression habits.Based on reading parallel texts,accessing to relevant information,reading the source text repeatedly,the translator uses the footnote method,looking up to the relevant dictionary,semantic extension and other methods to translate the vocabulary in the translation process.At the same time,the translator adopts the voice conversion and adjusts sentence order to translate the long sentences,and also adopts the zero translation and submission translation methods to translate the sentences with the punctuation mark dashes.The translator benefits a lot from this translation practice.It can be concluded that it is necessary to master a large number of relevant background knowledge and access to extensive information.In the meantime,the translator applies the translation strategies according to the translation issues.The translator also recognizes that there still exist many deficiencies in the translation process.For example,the translation quality need to be improved,the choice of words and expressions being not authentic.Most importantly,the translation practice can not only introduce the Italian culture for the Chinese readers,but also can improve the translator’s own translation level.