A Report On Chinese-English Translation Of The Yellow River And Chinese Civilization (Excerpts)

The Yellow River,the cradle of Chinese civilization,is regarded as the origin and symbol of Chinese civilization since it has witnessed the history of the Chinese people’s hard struggle and the Chinese nation’s constant changes.With China’s enhanced comprehensive national strength and improved international status,Chinese culture has received increasing attention and recognition from the international community.Subsequently,studying the culture of the Yellow River and exploring its significance and value in Chinese civilization and times have become hot topics in various fields.As translators,we are responsible for telling Chinese stories well and promoting cultural communications and academic exchanges globally.For this purpose,the translator selected the book The Yellow River and Chinese Civilization as the source for the practice and discussed the key points and difficulties in the translation.The Yellow River and Chinese Civilization is a work that has an important impact on human geography.The author systematically describes the geography,history and culture of the Yellow River with accurate data and vivid language,presenting the complete and actual mother river of China.Featuring science and literature,the text is rich in information,logical and lively.It transmits professional knowledge while showing the charm of Chinese.Guided by Reiss’ s text typology theory,this report discusses translation strategies for different difficulties at the lexical,syntactical,and textual levels.At the lexical level,the translator explains geographic terms and traditional Chinese proper nouns through literal translation,free translation and the addition of notes based on background knowledge,ensuring the precision of the translation;at the syntactical level,the translator mainly studies serial verb sentences and loose sentences.According to the differences between Chinese and English,the translator uses linearity and division to make the translation natural and idiomatic,which accord with the syntactic rules of the target language while preserving the aesthetics of the source text;at the textual level,the translator mainly discusses grammatical and lexical cohesion.By applying reference and conjunction,the cohesion and coherence of the translation are achieved.Based on text typology theory,by studying and analyzing typical cases,the translator has further learned translation skills and strategies,improved her translation competence and accumulated experience for future study.The translator hopes that this report may provide some valuable references for the translation of the text of human geography.