A C-E Translation Report On Myths And Legends Of The Bai(Excerpt) Based On Chesterman’s Translation Norms

This is a translation report analyzing cases taken from Myths and Legends of the Bai,a work of folk literature,under the guidance of Chesterman’s Translation Norms.The book Myths and Legends of the Bai,where the source text is excerpted from,consists of four chapters which are mainly folktales related to the history,religious beliefs,culture and farming of the Bai in Dali,Yunnan Province.It also shows folk culture in the form of oral expression around the Erhai Lake.Thanks to its rich cultural elements,this book is of enormous research value.To promote this book and the ethnic cultures in Yunnan,the translator makes the first try at introducing the text in English and doing this translation report from the perspective of Chesterman’s Translation Norms.As more and more scholars begin to realize the importance of literary translation,a systematic and comprehensive theory becomes unprecedentedly important.So in this report,the translator takes Chesterman’s Translation Norms as the guiding theory partly because it contains sets of professional theories under an overall framework.This theory of translation norms,which is now gaining momentum,is introduced in detail by Andrew Chesterman in his book Memes of Translation: the Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory(1997).And it comprises mainly two parts: norms of both expectancy and professional and translation strategies in practice.Here,the practical translation strategies are of primary importance.In this thesis,the method of case analysis is used in case study and parallel text learning is conducted in translating the source text.Cases are to be analyzed in generally three aspects: syntactic level,semantic level and pragmatic level to meet the target readership expectations and the requirements of professional norms.The translation of the book and this report itself aim to introduce to the world the ethnic culture in Yunnan as well as help to strengthen China’s soft power at large.Hopefully,the project will usher in a new front of ethnic culture study,and more Chinese classics can be brought abroad.