A Report On The English Translation Of The Lingqu Canal(Excerpt)

This report is based on the translation of Chapter Three,Part One of The Lingqu Canal,the Series of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Sites in Guangxi Autonomous Region,compiled by Liu Zhonggui,Liu Jianxin,and Jiang Guanyuan.This chapter mainly introduces the engineering facilities of the Lingqu Canal and describes in details the general layout,the hub project,the canal project,the bank,the water gates and other engineering facilities with a total number of 10,712 Chinese characters.The Lingqu Canal is a link connecting the maritime Silk Road and the land Silk Road in the ancient time.In August 2018,the Lingqu Canal was successfully added to the List of the World's Heritage Irrigation Structures.Whether in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative or from the historical perspective of the World Heritage Sites,it is of great significance to further strengthen the publicity and introduction of materials related to the Lingqu Canal,an English translation of the engineering facilities of the Lingqu Canal in particular.The English translation of the materials of the Lingqu Canal can help foreign readers better understand the structural charm of the Lingqu Canal in the view of technical content.In his book Approaches to Translation,Peter Newmark puts forward the strategy of semantic translation and communicative translation,arguing that communicative translation tries to give the target readers nearly the same reading experience as the source readers,and semantic translation tries to reproduce the accurate meaning of the source language context in a way that is closest to the second language semantic and syntactic structure(Newmark,2001a).Based on the strategy of semantic translation and communicative translation,this paper argues at the lexical level that geological terms,culture-loaded words,etc.can be translated by means of adding footnotes,specification,transliteration with interpretation,word for word translation guided by semantic translation and communicative translation.In the translation of sentences,long and difficult sentences with four-character phrases and classical Chinese,are translated by voice shifting,combination and division translation and omission so as to make it easy for the target readers to understand it without the change of the structure of the source text.Finally,the author finds that semantic translation and communicative translation strategies are complementary.A systematic comprehension of semantic translation and communicative translation and a deep understanding of the importance of combining the theory with the practice have been gained through this translation practice.The purpose of this report is to provide references for the translation of engineering facilities texts in the future.