A Report On E-C Translation Of The War Of The Eastern Front In 1914 From The Perspective Of Cognitive Context

The translation material adopted in this report is excerpted from The War of the Eastern Front in 1914,which truly records the historical scenes of the Eastern Front during the First World War.The war is famous for the amazing scale and is acknowledged as the remarkable terminator of several feudal empires in Europe,such as the Russian Empire,Austro-Hungarian Empire and German Empire,thus opening a new epoch in human history.This text is a rare historical document describing the Eastern Front,which objectively contributes to the difficulty of translation.The author participates in the translation program of The War of the Eastern Front in 1914.On one hand she can generalize some practical and efficient translation strategies for historical documents;on the other hand,she can present more people these little-known historical details.This report selects the first and second chapters of the book to analyze and interpret the translation of The War of the Eastern Front in 1914,which is based on Cognitive Context Theory.According to the theoretical framework above,Cognitive Context has the characteristics of dynamicity,culturality and integrity.Therefore,the author proposes several translation methods within the perspective of Cognitive Context.Judging from the textual features,the author discovers many features such as past participles,parts of speech reappearance with inclusion,many long sentences,many numerical descriptions,chronological order and strong logicality.Based on these textual features and the theoretical items,this paper makes a theoretical analysis on the hierarchical structures of lexical levels.long sentences and discourses,specifically,the translation of lexical levels from a dynamic perspective,the translation of long sentences from a cultural perspective and the translation of discourses from an integral perspective.For several case analyses,in order to explore the text more comprehensively,the author mainly explains the related phenomena rom four aspects:Discourse Understanding,Expression of Discourse Information,Choice of Cognitive Context and Translation Methods.The innovation of this report focuses on the combination between the features of Cognitive Context and the linguistic features of historical texts.Eventually the author can choose different translation methods according to the concrete Cognitive Context,including some linguistic and cultural features.This report mainly adopts the translation strategies as follows:conversion,amplification,division,free translation,annotation translation,linear translation and reverse translation,and proposes specific translation strategies for different language phenomena in the text,with a view to providing some references for the translation of historical documents.Through this translation practice,the author has come to the following conclusions:(1)Translators need to combine the historical backgrounds with cultural backgrounds at that time to minimize the differences of Cognitive Context between the readers and the author.Meanwhile,they need to increase the coupling between the two texts,so as to indirectly enhance the identity of Chinese and English readers and infinitely achieve the effect of dynamic equivalence before the translation can better inherit the former features of the ST;(2)In the translating process,the stylistic features of the ST,such as logicality and authenticity,should be kept as much as possible so that Chinese readers can understand the historical process more intuitively.(3)The specific translation methods should be selected according to the differences of Cognitive Context between the readers and the author,the cognitive abilities of the readers and the textual characteristics.From the perspective of dynamicity,conversion and literal translation are often used in the translation of lexical levels.From the perspective of culturality,the translation of long sentences requires the translator to reflect the cultural context of the ST,so those translation methods like amplification,free translation,transliteration plus annotation are more frequently used.From the perspective of integrity,there are differences between Chinese and English paragraphs in the way they are expressed In the translation of' discourses,division,linear translation and reverse translation are frequently used.