On Back-translation Strategies For Historical Text From The Text Typology Perspective

Nanking Massacre is one of the largest and most influential atrocities which has no parallel in modern human history.The number of witnesses who suffered from the atrocities personally is sharply decreasing.Thus,the importance of historical text on the Nanking Massacre is becoming increasingly prominent.The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan,China,and the United States is a history research book written by Prof.Takashi Yoshida under such historical background.According to Text Typology proposed by Reiss,this book,a historical text,is a representative informative text.This book introduces different studies and accounts from Japan,China and the United States on the Nanking Massacre in four time periods.The source text is extracted from this book's Introduction and Part 1,ALLIES AND ENEMIES IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC WAR(1937-1945).A lot of reports and accounts from Japan and China about the atrocity against China during 1937 to 1945,especially Nanking Massacre,are introduced in this part.In fact,many original historical data have been referenced to prove the author's opinion.The words transliterated from Japanese kana characters as well as the terminology and the expression bring lots of difficulties for the translation.Therefore,back-translation is not only used in the process of translating this book into English by Takashi Yoshida,but also in the process of translating it into Chinese.This translation report will help people all over the world have a better understanding about the Nanking Massacre.Meanwhile,it also will contribute to the development of back-translation,so as help Chinese cultural works and culture itself go abroad.This report is based on the translation of a historical research book,The Making of the “Rape of Nanking”: History and Memory in Japan,China,and the United States.Text Typology plays the role of theorical supporting point while back-translation becomes a breakthrough method.This report is composed of five parts.Chapter One introduces the background of this book and the practical significance of this report.Chapter Two shows the process of translation which contains preparation works before translation,translation and proofreading works.In the Chapter Three,theoretical framework has been introduced.Text Typology and back-translation are both guidelines to the process of writing this translation report.Moreover,it also analyzes characteristics of historical text.Chapter Four is a case study from the perspective of lexicon,quotation and double contextualization.Chapter Five makes a summary of this translation report.This part puts forward the findings and points out the limitations.