Strategies Of Translating Footnotes In Chinese Historical Biographies

In this era of globalization,a large quantity of Chinese books are being translated and published,which helps the world know better about China.This thesis is based on the translation in The Ninth Panchen Lama: A Biography,which describes the ups and downs in the life of the Ninth Panchen Lama,the leader of Tibetan Buddhism.A large number of documents are cited in the book,and some parts of the text are annotated.These citations and annotations result in a huge amount of footnotes in the book.In this thesis,the author discusses the difficulties and strategies in terms of the translation of the footnotes of The Ninth Panchen Lama.The main difficulties lie in three aspects: the diverse styles of footnotes within this book;the complexity of the footnotes,such as unfamiliar proper names and vague or even wrong information therein;the extremely lengthy footnotes.Aiming at solving these difficulties,the thesis puts forward several strategies,namely,working out a unified style sheet for translating footnotes,tracing back the source of the footnotes and interpreting the information behind so as to enhance the accuracy of translation,and rearranging the format of footnotes so as to fulfill the need of the publication.It should be noted that this thesis is about how to translate the footnotes,not about how to add footnotes as a means of translation compensation;in the meantime,it goes beyond translation and involves post-editing of the footnotes for the publication of the book.Hopefully the thesis will shed some new light in translating footnotes and thus help the translators improve their professionalism under similar circumstances.