A Report On The Chinese-english Academic Translation Of "On Some Theoretical Issues About Historical Strata Analysis"

This degree thesis consists of an academic translation project and a translation practice report.The translation project as a source text is the research paper entitled "On Some Theoretical Issues about Historical Strata Analysis" written by Professor Pan Wuyun and published by a core journal.This paper discusses seven essential issues of historical strata analysis,a newly-developed approach in historical linguistics to reconstruct ancient languages.The said sevens issues are uniformitarianism and the neo-grammarian hypothesis,catastrophism and borrowing,wendu and baidu readings,native stratum,identification of loan strata and native stratum,influence and borrowing,and real time and apparent time.In the discussion of each issue are interpreted distinctive concepts and principles.The translation difficulty of the paper is considerable and the total number of source-language characters for translation is about 14 000,which is high above the minimum standard set for the word count of the ST in terms of the MTI candidate's translation practice.The report based on this academic translation practice consists of four chapters.The first chapter is an introduction to the background and significance of the translation project.The second chapter is the description of the ST writer and the main content and major features of the ST.The third chapter presents the translation process,which includes pre-translation preparations,difficulties encountered and general solutions,and post-translation revision.The fourth chapter summarizes the major findings and limitations of the translation.This difficult academic translation has enabled the Author of the thesis to achieve the following:first,the general solutions developed for the translation of technical terms,culture-bound terms,Chinese verbs,and long sentences,which will provide practical help to translators facing similar problems;second,the significance of pre-translation preparations and the importance of post-translation revision.