A Report On E-C Translation Of Philosophy In An African Place（Excerpts）

This is a translation report written on the basis of E-C translation of excerpts from Philosophy in an African Place which is written by Bruce.B.Janz.This philosophy monograph creatively proposes “What is it to do philosophy in this African place?”,which serves as the new discovery of the research in the field of African philosophy,and it is of significant importance to the study on foreign philosophy.Therefore,translation of this monograph helps to inject new ideas into the study of African philosophy and provide reference for philosophical researchers concerned.The source text of this translation project has about 16,000 words and has distinctive text features.In addition to involving a large number of philosophical terminologies,the source text covers abundant polysemes,loanwords and pronouns,inserted phrases,complex sentences and sentences with comparative structures.Also,the language of the source text is rigorously logical and broad viewpoints of many foreign philosophers are cited to explain African philosophy,which endows the source text with strong professionalism.In the process of translation,it is necessary to clarify the connotation of terms and select appropriate Chinese translation for polysemes,to make the translation convey the philosophical connotations accurately and properly,and to meet the requirements like abstract content and rigorous and formal style of philosophical texts.The theory of Discourse Cohesion proposed by Halliday and Hasan includes grammatical cohesion,structural cohesion,and non-structural cohesion and incorporates cohesive methods such as reference,substitution,conjunction,omission,and lexical cohesion from the systemic functional linguistics,which not only emphasizes the cohesion of sentences,but also the coherent meaning of the discourse itself.Under its guidance,the specific translation methods adopted include extension of the meaning of polysemous words,literal translation with annotation of loanwords,ellipsis of pronouns,reoccurrence of comparative structures,and division of complex sentences for delivering the professional content of philosophy accurately and precisely and ensuring the rigor and conciseness of language logic.Based on the English to Chinese translation practice of excerpts from Philosophy in an African Place,this report analyzes the difficulties and translation methods by referring to the theory of discourse cohesion,and typical cases are selected to illustrate how to achieve the best cohesion of each part,so as to achieve the coherence of the whole text.This report attempts to explore the text characteristics and translation difficulties of philosophical texts and make a contribution to the Chinese translation of philosophical texts to some extent.