A Report On The E-C Translation Of A Collection Of Qian Zhongshu’s English Essays (Excerpt)

A Collection of Qian Zhongshu’s English Essays contains 24 English works by Mr.Qian Zhongshu,which involves the comparison and research between Chinese and Western classical literature,and has high academic and practical value.This report selects On Old Chinese Poetry(the fourth article),Foreword to the Prose-poetry of Su Tung-P’o(the tenth article),Tragedy in Old Chinese Drama(the eleventh article)and Chinese Literature(the fifteenth article)from A Collection of Qian Zhongshu’s English Essays as the source text of Chinese translation practice.The achievement of research on Mr.Qian Zhongshu’s English works is still rare,and the above four articles have not been translated into Chinese yet.This Chinese translation practice is carried out by analyzing the original author’s intention,the text typology and readers,taking the translation of Apropos of the“Shanghai Man” and Qian’s Chinese Poetry and Chinese Painting and On Chinese Poetry as parallel texts.Based on the theoretical guidance of “Sublimation theory” put forward by Mr.Qian Zhongshu,firmly combined with the practice of Chinese translation,this report analyzes the difficulties of the text from three aspects: language dimension,cultural dimension and aesthetic dimension,and sorts out the methods used in translation practice as well as analyzes the cases of translation practice.At the language level,corresponding to the characteristics of the article,literal translation,free translation and annotation methods are adopted to translate the names of people,the titles of books and culture-loaded words.At the cultural level,free translation and annotation are used to translate poetry;domestication is applied to deal with idioms;amplification and omission are utilized to translate scripts and novels.At the aesthetic level,it uses linear translation and part-of-speech conversion methods to deal with the conversion of Chinese and English sentences and rhetoric;addition,subtraction and logical conversion methods are selected to translate Run-on sentences.Through three levels of translation,it effectively deals with the difficulties caused by cultural differences,thinking differences and language differences,basically makes the translation faithful and smooth to realize the unique beauty of“Sublimation” for the readers.This report believes that in the translation of the texts with obvious Chinese characteristics,the translator should pay more attention to the relationship among the three dimensions of language,culture and aesthetics,and apply appropriate translation methods to make the translation fit the reading purpose of the target reader.This translation practice provides a sample for the translation and research of related poetry,scripts and novels.Owing to the extensive and profound cultural knowledge involved in the original text,and the limitations of the translator,the translation inevitably has deficiencies.I do hope that this report provides some references for related translation and research.