A Project Report On The Translation Of The Commentary Of South Guangxi Folk Art Museum

Folk culture is an important part of Chinese traditional culture.Translating folk culture and telling good Chinese folk stories to the world will help more people understand Chinese culture and China,and boost our cultural confidence.Against the current background of Chinese culture’s going global,museum commentary translation has come into view as a focus of interest in the translation field.The project the present author was entrusted with is translating The Commentary of South Guangxi Folk Art Museum from Chinese into English.The commentary is a comprehensive introduction to the folk art exhibits of the museum,presenting the audiences with their characteristics and the culture behind.The aim is to provide in-depth folk culture experience to foreign visitors and boost Guangxi’s characteristic culture.Therefore,the commentary translation also has significance in making contributions to Guangxi’s regional development.To the author’s knowledge,so far,in-depth research is lacking on the translation of commentaries of folk art museum in terms of its difficulties,strategies and skills.Translating the commentary is not an easy job,for it contains abundant names of folk art exhibits,quotations and common sayings.Besides,the aim of the commentary is to enhance the visitors’ interest in the exhibits and promote folk culture.How to achieve the intended purpose makes the translation all the more challenging.Guided by the theories of communicative and semantic translation,this report is intended to classify and analyze the typical difficulties and problems the present author encountered in the task,and report the relevant strategies and skills used.Hopefully the work may have implications for future endeavor of similar nature.This report addresses the difficulties and problems in the translation from three aspects.One is the rendering of the names of folk exhibits,including nicknames and ambiguous names.The second is the handling of quotations and common sayings.The third is how to effectively fulfil the purpose of the commentary.It is found that 1)the names of some folk exhibits can be directly put into English,so literal translation is the method used;2)since nicknames are scarce in English commentaries,omission is adopted in translating those in the original;3)when ambiguous names in the ST may hinder comprehension,information is supplemented in translation,thus applying the skill of amplification.In addition,the ST often features the style of written language and contains common sayings that may baffle the foreign audience.In this case,the author makes efforts to use equivalent English idiomatic expressions or adapt the images or conceptions of the original to fit the need of efficient communication.Finally,for achieving the purpose of the commentary,the author feels the need to rewrite the original text,adjust the sentence order or integrate information,so as to enhance the readability of the target text(TT),meet the expectations of the target audiences,and better publicize folk culture to the outside world.