A Report On The Translation Of Mencius And Masculinities (Excerpts)

This English-Chinese translation project finds its source text in the English monograph Mencius and Masculinities:Dynamics of Power,Morality,and Maternal Thinking,which was published in 2007 by Joanne D.Birdwhistell,a contemporary American sinologist.From the perspective of feminism,Birdwhistell expounds gender concern in Mencius's thoughts and analyzes the "maternal thinking"implied by Mencius's masculinities,transferring traditional Chinese family ethics to the political level of governing a nation and pacifying the world.Given the social philosophical interpretation of Mencius's thoughts in the source text,there are a great number of Confucian philosophical terms,cultural concepts as well as citations from Mencius.In the process of English-Chinese translation,the translator takes back-translation strategy for the contents involving Confucian philosophy and finds the author's quotes from the original text of Mencius,referring to accepted Chinese expressions or idioms to ensure accuracy and refinement of the target text.Various examples of relevant proper nouns,citations,and cultural concepts are presented in the report for analyzing diverse cases of back-translation.The translator intends to make the translation faithful to both its source text and its cited origins so as to better reflect the characteristics of Chinese philosophy from the western view.Based on the translation of the Introduction,the fifth and the sixth chapter of the source text,the report summarizes such back-translation strategies as direct and indirect translation,addition,omission as well as contextual consideration so as to explore approaches of cultural translation of sinological texts.In structure,this report is composed of four parts.The first part is a brief introduction to the project,explaining its source,significance and contents.The second part presents the process of translation,which consists of preparation for the translation,specific techniques adopted in the translation and the revision after translation.As for the preparation,the report mainly analyzes the background of the source text,its parallel text,translation tools and strategies.The third part is the core of the report which discusses the concept and significance of the back-translation strategy and its application from the aspects of vocabulary and sentence structure through case studies.The last part is a summary of experience and lessons learned from this translation practice.