A Report On C-E Translation Difficulties And Countermeasures Of Gu Dai Xiao Shuo Yu Ke Ju

In the context of Chinese culture “going out”,the Chinese Academic Translation Project(CATP)is a part of Chinese culture “going out”.It is under this background that this report is carried out.Based on the C-E translation of the fourth part of Gu Dai Xiao Shuo Yu Ke Ju,this translation report mainly discusses how to translate the keju culture in the context of Chinese culture “going out”,especially culture encoded in classical Chinese.In the report,literature review method is used to summarize existing research,case study method is adopted in the main part of the report,and comparative analysis method is employed in case study to compare the reporter’s version with the modified version of her tutor.The translation report focuses on how to overcome the difficulties during the translating process,such as the translation choice of polysemy,the translation choice for words with both ancient and modern meanings,the translation choice for words’ implied meaning,and the translation strategy choice for cultural vacancy.For the difficulties that scholars have studied and solved,the reporter borrows the solutions proposed by them.For the difficulties that scholars have not discussed and the difficulties that scholars have discussed but not solved well,the reporter attempts to solve the relevant difficulties under the guidance of the Skopos theory.The purpose of this project is to introduce Chinese culture to the western world and enrich their knowledge about the historical contribution of the keju system in the selection of public servants.Therefore,the reporter takes the keju culture encoded in classical Chinese “going out” as the standard to evaluate the translation quality,that is,after “going out”,the Chinese keju culture encoded in classical Chinese has its unique cultural identity,and the target readers can understand this culture.Besides,the reporter compares her translation with the revised version to find out the solutions to these difficulties.As for the translation choice of polysemy and the translation choice for words with both ancient and modern meanings,scholars proposed that the solutions include probing into the materials and understanding the source text carefully.The reporter uses the methods put forward by scholars and solves these problems.As for the difficulty of translation choice for words’ implied meaning,no scholar has put forward relevant strategy or method.Starting from the basic meaning of the word,aiming at the readers’ better understanding of the source text and promoting the keju culture,the reporter chooses the free translation as the main method and the literal translation as auxiliary one.As for the difficulty of the translation strategy choice for cultural vacancy,the reporter uses the foreignization strategy and the transliteration method proposed by scholars.However,as far as the foreignization strategy concerned,no scholar has put forward relevant arguments on whether the translation should be foreignized to ancient Chinese culture or contemporary culture,which is not only a problem to be solved in this report,but also an important problem for translation theory and practice.The source text belongs to the Chinese Academic Translation Project,whose purpose is to convey the keju culture in ancient China to the western readers.Therefore,as for the translation strategy choice for cultural vacancy,the foreignization strategy is a better choice.Moreover,the strategy of ancient Chinese culture-oriented foreignization can better convey the authentic Chinese keju culture.If the reporter chooses the strategy of modern Chinese culture-oriented foreignization,what the western readers accept is a modern examination system,not the ancient Chinese keju system that has a significant impact on the world.In the past,when scholars discussed translation strategies,they only discussed the translation of source-oriented culture and target-oriented culture,that is,the strategies of foreignization and domestication.In the process of practice,this study finds that there is still a further choice in the foreignization strategy within the source culture,that is,the choice of ancient Chinese culture-oriented foreignization or modern Chinese culture-oriented foreignization,and the reporter solves this difficulty under the guidance of the Skopos theory.In the process of translating the source text,the reporter uses the solutions proposed by scholars to solve the difficulties of the translation choice of polysemy and the translation choice for words with both ancient and modern meanings.As for translation choice for words’ implied meaning and a further choice of the foreignization strategy in cultural vacancy,the reporter has her discovery and exploration under the guidance of the Skopos theory and draws to a conclusion.These explorations are of great significance to the translation theory and practice of ancient Chinese culture going to the world.