A Report On The E-C Translation Of Chapters 3 And 4 Of The Rise And Fall Of Ancient Egypt

This is a translation report on the E-C translation of Chapter 3 and part of Chapter 4 of The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt written by Toby Wilkinson.Taking ancient Egypt’s “rise and fall” as the topic throughout this book,the author represents the ancient civilization’s spectacular monuments,extraordinary cultural achievements,and a panoramic view of its history from its genesis to its absorption into the Roman Empire.The author’s academic insights coupled with an elegant writing style have made this book highly informative and readable so that it can be not only studied by historians but also enjoyed by ordinary readers.The source text is basically is an informative one,which gives an introduction to the history of ancient Egypt.Its language is beautiful and elegant and its complex sentence structures and deliberate diction give a literary touch to this book.Accordingly,the translator decided to complete the translation project under the guidance of Peter Newmark’s theories of semantic translation and communicative translation.Whereas communicative translation theory addresses itself to the target readers and focuses on information provision,which requires the translator to recast the language structure of the original to make their translation idiomatic,understandable and fluent,semantic translation theory on the other hand emphasizes that the translator should respect the original text and keep its structure and lexical order as much as possible.In compliance with these two theories,such translation strategies as addition,omission,conversion,and extension,as well as Chinese four-character expressions,are used at the lexical level;rearranging the original syntactic order,converting the passive voice to the active voice,literal translation and following the original syntactic order are employed at the syntactic level.The adoption of Newmark’s translation theories and relevant use of translation strategies in the project has proved to be effective in translating the source text.It is hoped that this translation project can provide lessons and advice to translators who will be undertaking similar translation projects.