A Report On E-C Translation Of Biographical Literature Guided By Liu Miqing’s Cultural Translation Theory

Biographies of historical characters are featured in authenticity,historicity and literariness.The English-Chinese translation of biographies on British historical figures not only helps Chinese readers understand and appreciate the charm of British history and culture better,but also lays a good and solid foundation for future friendly cooperation between China and the UK.The translation material of this thesis is based on the first two chapters of Henry II: A Prince Among Princes written by British contemporary historian Richard William Barber.In this book,the author Richard Barber vividly depicted the life of Henry II,the first monarch of the House of Plantagenet,with lots of rich and delicate details and character descriptions.The language of this biography is simple and natural.Due to the differences in national cultural psychology between the source language and the target language,as well as the differences in the ways of expression and habits between the two languages,it is a challenging task for the translator to transfer cultural information in some aspects.Therefore,the cultural translation theory proposed by the famous translation theorist Liu Miqing is chosen as the theoretical basis of this thesis to solve the problem of loss of cultural information in translation.The central subjects of cultural translation theory are cultural interpretation in semantics,cultural interpretation of the text,cultural and aesthetic phycology and expression theory.With typical examples from Henry II: A Prince Among Princes,thefourth part analyzed the translation skills from three aspects in semantics,culture and aesthetics,and flexibly applies compensation strategies,so as to express cultural significance accurately.It is found in this translation practice and research that flexible application of semantic compensation and language communication effect compensation,such as imitation,substitution,explanation and deculturation,can be conducive to the translator in expressing the cultural meaning accurately.It can also be helpful to the target language readers to have a better understanding of the work,so as to achieve better cultural communication.However,if the expression of the original text is ambiguous,even compensation can hardly be brought into full use.