A Report On The Chinese-English Translation Of The History Of The Woman Emperor Wu Zetian(Chapter Ⅶ And Chapter Ⅷ)

The source text of this translation practice report is chosen from the book The History of the Woman Emperor Wu Zetian written by Professor Zhao Wenrun,the former chairman of the Research Institute of Wu Zetian.This book belongs to biography of biographical literature(Yang Zhengrun,2009).It was published by Shaanxi People’s Publishing House in 2008.The whole body of the book is divided into eight chapters,and the translator is responsible for translating Chapter VII and Chapter VIII,namely,"Wu Zetian,the founder of the prosperous Tang Dynasty’s civilization"and "Wu Zetian,the female owner of the Qian Mausoleum".Among all the chapters,the seventh chapter expounds the specific contributions made by Wu Zetian,a founder of the Tang Dynasty’s civilization,to the politics,economy,religion,culture,agriculture,military affairs,people’s life,and even the overall development of the society at that time.In this chapter,the author also makes an in-depth analysis of Wu Zetian’s comprehensive quality and ability,thus an outstanding woman with charm and resourcefulness is outlined from the whole level.The eighth chapter focuses on the late years of her reign,analyzes some major reasons of the Wu Zhou regime’s final failure,states the contents of her testamentary edict and the process of her to be buried in the Qian Mausoleum,and finally puts forward the author’s views on the mystery of the Blank Monument.In this two chapters,on the basis of a large number of historical facts and documents,the author,with an objective and neutral attitude,uses concise,simple and expressive language to carefully describe the woman emperor’s life that was full of twists and turns,deep reflections and brilliant achievements,which provides readers with an excellent perspective to fully understand Wu Zetian.Since biographical literature both has the features of history and literature,when translating such texts,the translator should first accurately restore the historical events and figures mentioned in the original text,faithfully convey the original author’s thoughts and feelings,and retain the original writing style.At the same time,on the premise of meeting the target language norms,the translator should also ensure that the version is basically fluent and has the necessary logic,and try to reproduce the original text’s literary and artistic value as much as possible.Therefore,on the basis of summarizing and analyzing the main problems encountered in this practice according to their types,the translator used semantic translation and communicative translation proposed by British translation theorist Peter Newmark,and tried to solve these specific problems under the guidance of the two translation methods.Concretely,in this translation practice,when dealing with the contents that reflect the author’s thinking process(such as the summary and evaluation of the historical characters and events)and the writing style of the original text,as well as those with strong expressive force,the translator usually tends to follow the concept of semantic translation to highlight the features of the original text.In terms of translating some specific proper nouns,culture loaded words unfamiliar to the target readers,four character phrases with rich connotations and a large number of ancient Chinese quoted by the original author,the translator uses semantic translation and communicative translation alternately according to the specific situation.On one hand,such translation can help the readers fully understand the original text(namely,to better realize the communicative function of the language),meanwhile,it also reproduces the unique and important images and concepts in the original text as much as possible.Therefore,Wu Zetian and the Tang Dynasty’s history as well as culture would become more accepted by English readers,and the communication between the two languages and cultures would be promoted to some extent.