A Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of Letters On The Rendering Of The Name God In The Chinese Language (Letters 1,2,3)

This is a report on the English-Chinese translation practice,and the material is taken from Letters on the Rendering of the Name God in Chinese Language(letters 1.23).These are the letters James Legge(1815-1897)wrote for a magazine to present his ideas about the translation of "God".The first letter is a review of the discussion on whether the word "God" should be translated as "Shang-Te" or "Shin",and the following two letters present his own views on this issue.There is a great deal of background knowledge and proper nouns about Christianity in the source text which are likely to bring trouble to the target readers.The translator tries to explain these difficult points clearly in the process of translation and clear up the obstacles for readers.This text plays important roles in introducing Christianity,the history of the translation of the Bible and communication between China and the West.This report is composed of five chapters.Chapter One focuses on the introduction of the translation task,including the author,background information,characteristics of the source text and the significance of the translation practice;Chapter Two describes the process of the translation practice,including preparation,tools used in the translation practice and quality control;Chapter Three is an introduction of the theory applied in this translation report;Chapter Four is the analysis of the examples,the translator categorizes problems and solves them with different translation skills and strategies;and Chapter Five is a summary of the whole translation process.Under the instruction of Reiss'text typology,the translator classifies the source text as the information text,which is content-focused and pays much attention to the logic.Therefore,the translator prefers to use common words in the translation practice to convey the information of the source text clearly and completely.The translator mainly analyzes the problems encountered in the translation practice from two levels:the linguistic level and the cultural level.At linguistic level,she analyzes from aspects of the choice of word meaning,translation of elliptical information,and she also applies translation techniques of division,in-sequence translation and recasting to translate long and complex sentences,besides,she mentions the translation of passive sentences.At cultural level,the translator makes an analysis of the translation of proper nouns and terms that came across in the process of translating,in addition,she gives a detailed explanation of the related information of the term "God".The translator hopes that the translation can convey the accurate meaning of the source text and is in line with the expression habit of Chinese language.