A Report On The C-E Translation Of Yuelu Academy (Excerpt) From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Academic translation plays a significant role in knowledge structure construction.Yuelu Academy is well-known at home since it is one of the four great academies in ancient China.Many academic monographs about Yuelu Academy written by domestic scholars have been published,and these academic monographs introducing history and culture of Chinese academies enable readers to have a better understanding on Chinese culture as well.However,there are not many translation versions.This thesis is a report on the C-E translation of the excerpts from Yuelu Academy.The excerpts are mainly from chapter one named The History of Yuelu Academy.Based on the translation of this chapter,this thesis is to explore the translation methods for academic translation oriented by reception theory.The focus is on the translation of culture-loaded expressions in the excerpts by analyzing the main translation difficulties in translating the culture-loaded expressions with absolute semantic gap and those with relative semantic gap and selecting appropriate translation methods.The culture-loaded expressions with absolute semantic gap refer to expressions that have no semantic equivalents,and in this report years,titles of ancient books,names,places and official positions are grouped into this category,while the culture-loaded expressions with relative semantic gap stand for expressions which cannot cover the full range of semantic meaning between original language and target language,and in this report idioms,Chinese Four-character Expressions and archaic words are included.As for the culture-loaded expressions with absolute semantic gap,transliteration with annotations,literal translation and explanatory translation are adopted in the translation practice,and for those with relative semantic gap,free translation and domestication are utilized.It can be concluded that under the guidance of reception theory,the translator should firstly have a basic understanding of the comprehensive knowledge structure of the academic monograph,and then a suitable translation theory should be the guidance,and readers' response should be valued.At last,acceptable translation methods should be selected so as to make the translation cater to target readers' expectation horizon and correspond to their reading habits.