A Translation Project Report On Life In China(Chapter 1 Of Part 4)

The translation project report is based on the first chapter of the fourth part of Life in China,which is written by a British missionary and diplomat William Charles Miline(1815-1863).According to the author's personal experience,Life in China describes the social customs of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in the late Qing Dynasty,and also the specific living conditions of Westerners in China,indicating Europeans' construction of “China Image” at that time.The first chapter of the fourth part of Life in China,which is the source text of the project,mainly introduces Shanghai's geography,local products,tides,and social customs.As a first-hand historical material,this book has high academic value for the modern history study of cultural exchanges between China and West.This book has been frequently quoted in various academic studies,but the Chinese version has not been produced yet.The purpose of this translation project is mainly to benefit scholars who are interested in the history of modern Chinese and Western cultural exchanges,but have some difficulties in English reading.This translation project takes functional equivalence proposed by Eugene A.Nida as its theoretical foundation and strives to make the reception of target readers to target text almost same with that of source readers to source text.In addition,according to the book Approaches to Translation by Peter Newmark,different text types have different textual functions and different methods should be adopted when dealing with different texts.The original text of this translation project belongs to both informative and expressive text.Therefore,according to the practical problems encountered in this translation project,that is the translation of the proper nouns,culture-loaded words and passive voice.And combined with the above two theories,through the analysis of specific examples of translation,the translator applies different translation techniques,that is transliteration,literal translation plus annotation and change of voice,hoping to achieve the “closest natural equivalence” between the target text and the source text.