An Analysis Of The English Translations Of Economic Terms In Shi Ji And Han Shu From The Perspective Of Universals

In the long course of China's historical development,voluminous Chinese classics wereproduced.These classics represent ancient Chinese people's wisdom.A large amount of economic terms that relate to information in the economic field have been identified in these Chinese classics.They give us a panoramic view to ancient Chinese economy.The translation studies of economic terms in Chinese classics may help to develop further research in term translation studies and disseminate the knowledge system of ancient Chinese economic conditions.Shi Ji and Han Shu are two masterpieces in Chinese history.Both of them enjoy a high reputation for their great historical value.Economic terms contained in this two history books show the important economic achievements of ancient China from the era of the Yellow Emperor to the Han Dynasty.It would be worthwhile for an in-depth research of these economic terms in translation studies.The corpus referred to in this paper is made of Shi Ji and its three English translations,Burton Watson's Records of the Grand Historian,William H.Nienhauser,Jr.'s The Grand Scribe's Records,and Yang Hsien-yi and his wife Gladys Yang's Selections from Records of the Historian,as well as Han Shu and its two English translations,Burton Watson's Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China: Selections from the History of the Former Han by Pan Ku and Homer H.Dubs' The History of the Former Han Dynasty: A Critical Translation with Annotations.This paper investigates the translation of economic terms in Shi Ji and Han Shu with a qualitative analysis method and comparative analysis method within the framework of Translation Universals.The results show that some of the English translations of Shi Ji and Han Shu are oriented towards general readers and the others are for Sinologists and Chinese Studies scholars,but a certain degree of translation universals can be observed among the English translations of the majority of economic terms.The translation universals observed includes simplification,explicitation and normalization.In view of the high acceptability of these translations,a conclusion is drawn in this paper that the translation methods covered in translation universals should be applied in Chinese classics translation so as to help the targetreadership in the West to better appreciate traditional Chinese economic culture,which would further promote the transmission of Chinese cultural tradition to the rest of the world.