Report On The Translation Practice Of Paul Kings’ In The Chinese Customs Service:A Record Of Forty-seven Years(Chapters 21-22) From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

This practice report is based on the translation of the eleventh and twelfth chapters of In the Chinese Customs Service: a Record of Forty-seven Years,a memoir written by Paul King,who was once an employee at modern Chinese Maritime Service.In the excerpted chapters,the author expounds on his experiences when serving as Custom Commissioner in Amoy and Foochou.Divided into five parts,this report includes background introduction,theoretical overviews,project description,cases study and conclusions.Paul King’s memoir is marked by its authenticity and literary value,as could be found in most memoirs or biographies.But this memoir is also characterized by its own uniqueness.In addition to the massive historical information concerning important events in modern China,it features numerous proper nouns of historical significance--notably those derived from Chinese,various and flexible expressions combined with all kinds of writing techniques,and some cultural and emotional factors hard to tackle in translation.In light of these textual features,the practice report,under the guidance of Relevance Theory,examines some carefully chosen translation cases at the lexical,syntactic and extralinguistic levels in order to come up with a general view of the translation techniques and skills involved in the translated texts.Based on analysis,it argues that: 1)At the lexical level,the assorted foreign or Chinese proper nouns can be dealt with by employing some translating skills,including transliteration,annotation and amplification to reduce the processing effort of the audience.Besides,they should be verified to ensure the accuracy;2)at the syntactic level,in view of the cognitive environment of the target readers,it is advisable to take into consideration the differences in the sentence structure and sentence features between English and Chinese and choose the appropriate translating methods accordingly;and 3)at the extralinguistic level,to deal with cultural images and the emotional factors,foreignizing,domestic and semantic translations are suggested.Doubtless,the whole process of this translation practice has not only bettered my understanding of Relevance Theory,but also offered me the first-hand experience of what translation means and what techniques are available for a translator in combating translation obstacles.Hopefully,the present report would offer some insights for future study on the translation of historical materials.