A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Greeks And Barbarians(Excerpts)

The civilization of ancient Greece has been the base of western civilization.Absorbing and drawing from ancient Greek culture is of great importance for the development of Chinese culture.The selected material of the report is originated from the first two chapters of Greeks and Barbarians written by J.A.K.Thomson,professor emeritus of classics at King’s College,London.The book mainly introduces civilization of ancient Greece and includes detailed description about Greeks and barbarians.The author adopted “Comprehension,Expression and Adaptation” as framework and employed relative translation skills to guide the process of translation.The source text mainly describes characters and costume of Greeks and barbarians as well as narrates the battle of Thermopylae in Greco-Persian Wars.The author finished this report through phases of Comprehension,Expression and Adaptation.In the phase of comprehension,the author employed the Christiane Nord’s text analysis theory to analyze the source text,clarifying features and styles of the target text.In addition,the author deepened her understanding of source text with the help of internal and external tools as well as logical thinking.In the phase of expression,the author first clarified that the target language needs to retain the style of the original text.Secondly,the author assumed that the target language should be concise.Thirdly,the author put forward that idiomatic Chinese should be used in the target text.In the phase of adaptation,the author utilized several translation skills to make adjustment to the source text and conduct proofreading and polishing.The report focuses on Chinese translation of cultural text and took professor Li Changshuan’s “Comprehension,Expression and Adaptation” as guidance.It aims at exploring translation difficulties and skills encountered in the process of translation and then proposing appropriate solutions so as to give some suggestions to translators who are engaged in cultural texts.Meanwhile,the author realized that excellent translation of cultural text requires theory guidance,background information reserve and adept translation skills.