A Translation Report On An Arcane Book About The South China Sea: Cultural Interpretations Of The South China Sea Voyage Book By Fishermen Of Hainan (Excerpts )

The dispute of the South China Sea has been one of the regional hot issues in recent years. As the first country discovering the South China Sea islands and giving their names,China owns indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and adjacent waters. Besides,China's claim has been supported by ample historical and jurisprudential evidence. The South China Sea Voyage Book is a strong evidence to prove that Chinese people have developed the South China Sea since ancient times. However,there are not many researches into its translation at present.The source text of this research is chosen from An Arcane Book about the South China Sea: Cultural Interpretations of the South China Sea Voyage Book by Fishermen of Hainan(the Arcane Book), which was written by Prof. Zhou Weiming and Prof. Tang Lingling.What I have selected as the source text is the first three sections of Chapter Four of the Arcane Book. This part mainly introduces the historical background of the Voyage Book,exploring its origin as well as its evolution and wide application. Under the guidance of Skopos Theory,the report discusses difficulties through numerous examples and explores corresponding strategies and techniques.The report consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduces the background,significance and the source text, which refers to why the text is used for studying Chinese-English translation and why this research is necessary and important for the current situation. Chapter Two describes three stages of translation process, the pre-translation,translating process and proofreading. Chapter Three discusses Skopos theory, in particular, its four rules applied to translating the source text. Chapter Four focuses on the detailed discussion about the three difficult points in the process of translating the source text. The translator succeeds in employing a few translation strategies and techniques to cope with them under the guidance of Skopos Theory. Chapter Five ends in summing up the translator's achievements and the problems unsolved.