A Translation Project Report Of China:Promise Or Threat?(Chapter 5-7)

This translation project report involves chapters 5 to 7 from the book China:Promise or Threat?by Germany sociologist Horst Jurgen Helle.The well-structured book provides readers with a clue to master Chinese religious history,and supplies abundant resources for domestic and foreign scholars who are interested in Chinese religions.The chosen chapters focus on religious vitality of contemporary China,Max Weber’s view of religion in China,Daoism and its thought of "Wu wei" which has made an impact on state policies of Chinese emperors.Thus,readers can acquire knowledge of religious process of China so as to develop a more profound understanding of Chinese history.The difficult points of excerpts of the book lie in that both Chinese and western religions discussed in the book have affected their own culture respectively.And the author finds the distinction between Chinese and western religions by comparison of cultures.In addition,the translator comprehends the relations between Chinese history,education,politics,philosophy,society as well as biology clearly.Therefore,the translator is required to master relevant knowledge about Chinese and western religions to understand the source texts accurately.Moreover,due to a large number of proper nouns and names of religious books,the translator needs to possess pertinent professional knowledge to translate the texts clearly.In view of this,the skopos theory of German functionalism is adopted to guide the paper.And the three principles,skopos rule,coherence rule and fidelity rule,have laid a foundation for the report.In addition,translation methods including literal translation,free translation and division are combined to make the target texts consistent with source texts in content and style.Thus,readability and fluency of the target texts are enhanced.Through writing the translation report,the translator realizes the importance of professional background information.The translator should not only have an accurate understanding of the source texts,but also have a good literary foundation to produce fluent target texts,"Rome was not built in a day".So translation is a process of ceaseless learning and improving.And the translator is supposed to read extensively for acquiring multidisciplinary knowledge to advance the translation ability unremittingly.