An Analysis Of The Chinese-English Translation Of Ancient Chinese Boats And Ships

China has been a maritime power since ancient times,with a rich marine culture and a long maritime civilization.In ancient China,shipbuilding and navigation technology were flourishing.Back then,there were various types of ancient boats and ships.Under the initiative of building the "Maritime Silk Road",it has become one of the most important tasks for the translation of Chinese culture for international communication.In this paper,the author first sorts and classifies the names of ancient.Chinese boats and ships from works and documents such as "The Science and Civilization in China","The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze","When China Ruled the Seas","Chinese Junks and Other Crafts" and "Ancient Chinese Ships:Illustrated Handlebook".On this basis,the most representative names of ancient Chinese boats and ships are selected as the corpus for the case study herein.The author will apply some western translation theories such as those by Eugene Nida,Peter Newmark,Mona Baker,and Javier Franco Aixela to analyze the existing English translations.Through the analysis,the author of this thesis concludes that although there are a large number of ancient Chinese boat and ship names,translators can flexibly adopt proper translation methods,including such translation methods as literal translation,free translation,combination of transliteration and literal translation,extraltextual gloss and multimodal translation.Those terms named after function,structure,appearance or shape of a boat or ship are usually translated by equivalent words in English.If there are no equivalent words,or the names are rather complex,thus difficult to understand,free translation is often adopted.For those names composed of "proper name+common name",the translation method of"transliteration for proper name,and literal translation for common name" is a suitable approach.For the names with rich cultural connotations,the method of adding extraltextual gloss can be properly applied.Besides,the multimodal translation method is also used in the English translation of ancient Chinese boat and ship names to illustrate their features in appearance or structure.It is hoped that this study is conducive to the translation study of ancient Chinese maritime works and on the translation of ancient Chinese scientific and technological terms,but can also shed light on the translation practice of maritime documents.