Report On English Translation Of Chapter Seventeen And A Part Of Chapter Eighteen In Zhongguo Shenmei Wenhua Jianshi

With its rapid development,China has been attaching increasing importance to building its international image and the transmission of Chinese culture to the outside world.Traditional Chinese culture,with its unique attraction,is the gem of Chinese culture,and the English translation of its texts is significant to China’s cultural exchanges with other cultures and construction of its international image.The traditional Chinese aesthetic culture is the most brilliant part of traditional Chinese culture and,in China’s effort to make dissemination of its traditional culture to the outside world,the English translation of research achievements in that regard will play an important role.The scholarly book Zhongguo Shenmei Wenhua Jianshi(A Brief History of Chinese Aesthetic Culture)explains chronologically the most aesthetically valuable cultural resources of dynastic China in an all-round way with vivid illustrations,authentic descriptions,and detailed commentaries,aiming at surveying the long and productive history of traditional Chinese aesthetics.Up to now,it has not been rendered into English version,and therefore its English translation is both necessary and original.This project aims to explore the translation of Chapter Seventeen and a part of Chapter Eighteen of the Chinese book into English.The chapters elaborates on the traditional Chinese aesthetic culture with regard to the earthly world,novels,and dramas of the Ming Dynasty and painting in the Qing Dynasty in feudal China,unfolding the pursuit and aesthetic taste prevalent in the periods.On the basis of her experience of translating it,the translator writes her translating report,involving the description of the translation task,the translation process and an overall explanation of her translating the chapter with an emphasis on the representation of the original literary features.The text of the Chinese chapter is basically academic in style,yet featured with striking literary features,which are represented by its writing way and the profuse citations from literary works.Therefore,as the part dedicated to reporting the difficulty in her translation,the translator,on the basis of pursuing an overall balance between documentariness and literariness,analyzes her representation of the original literary features.The translator’s overall strategy of translating the Chinese text is,on the one hand,retaining properly the value and belief system,theoretical form,frame of thought,and way of expression of the original text,so as to make sure that the English version presents features of the English academic prose,and,on the other hand,adequately reproducing the original literary features.Her effort has been oriented to rendering the original so that it can speak accurately to the English speaking academic community and realize effective communication with it for the purpose of transmitting the profound traditional Chinese aesthetic culture.In practice,considering the dualistic nature of documentariness and literariness,the translator tries her best to render the original thought accurately and literariness properly.With regard to translating methods,the translator chooses appropriate methods flexibly according to the use of words,making of sentences,and development of the whole original text.On the level of words,the translator employs free translation,literal translation,transliteration with annotation;on the sentence level,she conducts her translation mainly by applying a syntactic approach,and on the textual level,she constructs the cohesion and coherence of the English text by using various cohesive means.In reproducing the original literary features,the translator,on the basis of an analysis of the literary features in the original text,discusses their translation,mainly concerned with the Chinese aesthetic rhetorical devices,characterization,and narrative points of view.By these efforts,the translator strives to reach the standard for publication of translated academic works in English,in the hope of realizing the objective of promoting the dissemination of traditional Chinese aesthetic culture to other countries.