A Practice Report On Semantic Compensation In The English Translation Of Classical Chinese Aphorism In The Ideal And Faith Of The Chinese

Classical Chinese aphorism is a conciseness and highly generalized wisdom of Chinese people on world cognition,living experience and life philosophy.As an important part of Chinese traditional culture,it is deeply loved by people all over the world and deserve to be vigorously spread.From the perspective of semantic compensation theory,this practice report focuses on the English translation of classical Chinese aphorism and selects the contents of the book The Ideal and Faith of the Chinese as the translation text.As for the classical Chinese aphorisms quoted from the book,translator adopts semantic compensation method to deliver these highly concise and obscure classical Chinese aphorisms with alarming function to western readers more accurately and expressively.The source text in the translation practice is a selection of two chapters from the Ideal and Faith of the Chinese,as 2018 key publication,book series of Knowing China,Understanding China,which is a relatively authoritative book summarizing Chinese culture,and quotes a large number of writings in classical Chinese aphorism as its arguments.In the practice of translation,it is found that the famous quotes as the classical Chinese aphorisms are highly concise and difficult to understand.In the process of initial translation,problems like misunderstanding and inaccurate translation are frequently appeared.Through analysis,it can be defined that the reasons for causing translation difficulties are translation problems,that is loss of inter-sentence cohesion,discrepant understandings,unclear connotations,cultural default and semantic misunderstandings of background information.For the definition of these translation problems,this report respectively adopts semantic textual cohesion,semantic contextual amplification,semantic paraphrase,semantic annotation and semantic adaption as solutions for modifying translation.The case analysis and translation practice summary show that the semantic compensation strategies have a great effect on the English translation of classical Chinese aphorism,and the translation quality has been significantly improved.