A Report On C-E Translation Of The Magnificent History Of The Han-Tang Dynasties (Excerpt)

The Magnificent History of the Han-Tang Dynasties was published by Zhonghua Book Company in 2021,and it is a scholarly monograph by Prof.Fu Lecheng.The book,formerly known as The Collection of History of Han-Tang Dynasties,is an18-chapter collection of Professor Fu’s historical research in the past 25 years on the history of the Han Dynasty,the Southern and Northern Dynasties,and the Sui and Tang Dynasties.It gives in-depth discussions,ranging from the political struggles,regional concepts,cultural patterns,and national culture,to historical figures,social life,and other aspects of the Han and Tang dynasties.It can best serve as a good reference for readers and researchers interested in Chinese history and culture.Selected as the source text,chapter two covers the academic situation,doctrines,resurgence and decline of Legalism,and prosperity of Confucianism in the early Han Dynasty.As an academic text,it is concise in language and exquisite in wording with lots of quotations from ancient Chinese classics.And as a text of Chinese history and culture,it is rich in terms and culture-loaded words that relate to schools of thought,political struggles,and social status.To convey the source text message to the target readers,the translator adopts Equivalence Theory proposed by Werner Koller to ensure that the meaning is appropriately represented.The translation is mainly carried out by following three steps.Firstly,aided with reference books,dictionaries,online resources,and so on,the translator analyzes the deep meanings of the terms,phrases,sentences,and culture in the chapter.The historical background is also explored for a better understanding of certain items.Secondly,with Equivalence Theory as guidance,namely “denotative equivalence”,“connotative equivalence”,and “text-normative equivalence”,the translator adopts different translation strategies to deal with the lexical and syntactical problems.Three strategies are applied.1)Denotative equivalence is achieved in the translation of specific terms and phrases related to Chinese culture and history by adopting literal translation with annotation so that target readers can understand it more easily with the help of the additional background information;2)By focusing on two dimensions,namely “range” and “evaluation”,in original author’s discussion on historical events and figures,the translator carefully examines the semantic prosody in the choice of words so as to match the style and the tone of the original text and achieve connotative equivalence between the source text and target text.3)To obtain text-normative equivalence,the translator also observes the text genre-specific features(e.g.,academic features)at the syntactic and textual levels.With sentence structures readjusted and additional information provided,the translator makes efforts to maintain the original “formality” and “logicality” in the translation.Finally,the translator conducts self-proofreading,such as checking the spelling and grammar to ensure the translation is readable and fluent to the readers.In recent years,with the implementation of the “going global” strategy of Chinese culture,more and more Chinese voice needs to be heard on the international stage.The introduction of the important events and figures in China’s long and rich history is highly needed to convey the specific Chinese culture and thoughts to people all over the worldwide.In this way,the current translation practice of The Magnificent History of the Han-Tang Dynasties can serve as an example to boost the infusion of Chinese and western cultures and shed some insights into the translation of similar topics.