A Practice Report On The Translation Of Categories Of Chinese Literary Theories In The Early-Middle Ages (Chapter 3)

The original text of this report is section 1&2 of the third chapter of Categories in Chinese Literary Theories in the Early-Middle Ages by Prof.Zhan Furui.This book consists of four chapters,mainly summarizing the emergence,formation and development of Literary Virtue,Art of Writing,Style and Literature Variation.Translating is a cross-cultural activity and the difficulty in the translation is not the formal differences between the two languages,but the rich cultural connotations behind the language.Categories of Chinese Literary Theories in the Early-Middle Ages is a monograph of literary theory,covering a large number of Chinese culture-specific items with rich connotations.Therefore,problems such as discrepant understandings,unclear connotations and cultural default will occur,which may lead to confusions and difficulties in comprehending and translating the source text.This report briefly introduces the theory of culture-specific items,analyzing the translation of culture-specific items under the guidance of Nida's functional equivalence theory,attempting to reproduce the original information in the closest and most natural equivalents.This report consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the task description,briefly introducing the source,content,significance,and requirements of this translation task.Chapter Two is preparation for translation,including analysis of original text,reading parallel text and tools for translation.Chapter Three is the process description,presenting the two stages of translation and review with details.Chapter Four is the key part,involving the core concepts and translation criteria of functional equivalence theory,and the definition and translation strategies of culture-specific items,explanations of the feasibility to apply functional equivalence theory in translation of culture-specific items,and seven strategies for translating different types of culture-specific items through specific cases,including transliteration,literal translation,naturalization,absolute universalization,intratextual gloss,extratextual gloss and deletion and summary of the applicable conditions of these seven strategies,attempting to achieve bilingual equivalence to the maximum extent.Chapter Five sums up the importance of translation preparation,the significance of translation theory and the implication of “where there is translation,there is no limited,but practical ways”.