A Report On The C-E Translation Of Antique Names And Commentaries In Hunan Museum

Hunan Museum is the largest museum of history and art in Hunan Province.It is one of the first national level museums and one of eight national museums co-built by the central government.The Hunan Museum currently has more than 180,000 antiques,and the antiques unearthed from the Mawangdui Han tomb are the most significant.A museum is an important window for a country to publicize its history and culture.The translation of antique names and commentaries in museums plays an important role in the process of cultural communication.Its standardization directly affects the smoothness of cultural communication.The translation work in the field of cultural expos in China is not complete yet,and researches on the translation of museum cultural antiques are also very limited.On the one hand,there are only limited monographs;on the other hand,the related researches lack systematisms and comprehensiveness,and cannot provide scientific theoretical and methodological guidance for the translation of specific antique names and commentaries in museums from Chinese into English.The material selected for this translation practice is relatively special.The source texts are the names and commentaries of antiques,which are information-oriented texts.The connotations of Chinese culture are rich in the source text,so the focus and difficulty of the translation practice also lie in how to translate the names and commentaries of antiques that containing Chinese cultural connotations into English.Under the guidance of two translation strategies of domestication and foreignization,in order to preserve the source language culture to the greatest extent,while the readability of the translation is taken into account,the method of literal translation should be put in the first place.When confronted with the names of antiques or their commentaries that cannot be translated directly,translation methods such as free translation with annotation,transliteration with annotation,or combination of literal translation and free translation can be adopted.At the same time,when translating the complex sentences in the antique commentaries,the translation method of merging is used to translate the repeated meanings in the complex sentences,and the translation method of modifying is used to translate the non-subject sentences in the source text.This translation practice deepens the translator’s understanding of domestication and foreignization translation strategies and improves the translator’s ability and level of English translation.In the end,the translator looks forward to providing reference for similar translation practices in the future.