An English-Chinese Translation Report Of The Qing Dynasty And Traditional Chinese Culture(Chapter One)

This is a report on the E-C translation.The source text is the excerpts from the book The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture published in 2015.The author of the book,Richard J Smith,professor of the history department of Rice University,described the Qing culture from historical and global perspectives.He showed how Chinese viewed the world and how their outlook on life and values were manifested in material culture and social customs.The translator chooses chapter one,The Ming Dynasty Legacy,to translate,enabling readers to learn about China’s Ming dynasty in the eyes of foreigners.This kind of translation into Chinese is a process of “cultural return” actually.The report summarizes the translation strategies and methods of historical texts like this,providing some enlightenment to the academic translation of historical themes in the future.Chapter one of the book mainly introduces the social systems,ideas and customs of the Ming dynasty,from administrative and military institutions to philosophy and ideology,which made great contributions to the foundation and development of the Qing dynasty.Considering the linguistic features,historical and cultural information in historical text excerpted,the translator adopts Susan Bassnett’s cultural translation theory to guide translation practice and selects appropriate translation methods according to different cultural classifications in source text for the purpose of cultural equivalence and cultural interaction,thus accurately conveying the cultural information and cultural connotation of the source text.In the process of translating historical texts,the translator needs to have a full understanding of cultural background and convey cultural concepts and information accurately.