A Report On The E-C Translation Of Chapters 21 And 22 Of The Rise And Fall Of Ancient Egypt

Based on the translation of Chapter 21 and part of Chapter 22 of the book The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt,this report discusses and analyzes the process of this translation practice project.The selected chapters introduce how ancient Egypt finally made an exit of the history stage after the death of Ramesses II.As a history text with literary value,this book is worth reading,and a Chinese translation of it could benefit both Chinese Egyptologists and general readers.Based on textual analysis,the translator chose J.C.Catford’s translation shift theory as the guiding theory of this project.In particular,to achieve equivalence between the original text and the target text,the translator paid due attention to lexical and categorical shifts when rendering the original text into a faithful and readable Chinese version.In view of some grammatical differences between Chinese and English,English plural nouns and inflected verbs were translated into corresponding Chinese expressions which reflect plurality and verb tense.In terms of category shifts,the translator used a series of translation strategies to enable shifts at four levels.Specifically,reorganizing sentence order as a common strategy was used to actualize structural shifts.For the purpose of class shifts,conversion of part of speech was used to convert some English verbs,prepositions and nouns into Chinese verbs.Where unit shifts were concerned,shifts among the linguistic units of sentence,clause,group,word and morpheme were made as necessary and appropriate.When it comes to intra-system shifts,where equivalence is hard to achieve between two languages,the translator used domestication as a major strategy to achieve smoothness and readability of the translation.The adoption of Catford’s translation shifts theory and relevant translation strategies has proven helpful for the translation of this book.