A Report On The Chinese-English Translation Project Of Chapters Six And Seven(Excerpt)of China’s Maritime Boundaries In The South China Sea:Studies From Chinese History And Perspectives

The material of this Chinese-English(C-E)translation project is excerpted from Chapters Six and Seven of Professor Li Jinming’s China’s Maritime Boundaries in the South China Sea:Studies from Chinese History and Perspectives.The two chapters elaborate on the long-standing exploration and operation activities of the Chinese people on Xisha Qundao and Nansha Qundao,as well as Chinese government’s diplomatic struggles in safeguarding their sovereignty over different periods,to demonstrate that China has gradually established sovereignty over the islands through the long course of history.The text mainly expresses facts,knowledge and viewpoints in an objective,accurate and logical way;thus,it falls into the category of informative text.This report is based on the C-E translation practice mentioned above.Through the analysis of the characteristics of the source text,the author mainly explores translation strategies and methods of the source text under the guidance of Peter Newmark’s communicative translation and translation principles of informative text.This report summarizes translation methods and skills used in dealing with the main four difficulties in the translation practice,i.e.,the translation of geographical names,of culture-loaded words,of classical quotations and of long sentences.It expounds on the methods to each one of them together with case analyses presented.A general translation principle summarized is to,based on ensuring accuracy to the original,take a targetlanguage-oriented approach to reproduce the information of the source text in a way that conforms to the language recognition system of target language readers employing literal translation,annotation,liberal translation and division etc.However,in terms of vocabularies with distinctive Chinese characteristics or with special connotations that are highly relevant to the theme of the source text,the original sound and form of such words or expressions should be retained as much as possible by transliteration or annotation in the process of the English translation.