A Report On Chinese Translation Of Meeting The Sun: A Journey All Round The World(Chapters 11-14)

The translated material of this translation report is from chapters 11 to 14 of Meeting the Sun: A Journey All Round the World written by William Simpson(1823-1899),a British artist,with about 12,000 English words.The book was published in 1874.No Chinese translation has been found yet at home and abroad.In the translated material,William Simpson mainly recorded his rich experiences and insights when traveling to Hong Kong,Tianjin,Beijing and other places in China during the Qing Dynasty(1636-1912),including the typhoons he met in Hong Kong,his voyages on the Chinese seas,stories of pirates,and the study of the floor plans of the Forbidden City.Combining the linguistic characteristics of the translated material,the key and difficult points of translation and the purpose of translation,the author chose Eugene Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory as the theoretical guidance.Functional Equivalence Theory requires the translator to accurately convey the information contained in the original text,the translation to be smooth and natural,and the target readers and the source readers to have approximately the same reaction after receiving the information.As the translated material is full of rich descriptions of scenery and characters,and records a lot of historical events,the author mainly discussed the difficulties encountered in translation practice and corresponding solutions from these three aspects.As for the scenery description,the author tries to convey the closest effect and artistic conception of the original work to the readers through conversion of Wade-Giles Pinyin nouns,use of four-character structure and use of division;In the character description,translation of rhetorical devices,conversion of voice and use of collocation are used to achieve lexical equivalence and syntactic equivalence to the greatest extent;In the historical events description,amplification,annotation and adjustment of sentence order are used to ensure that the historical information recorded in the original text is accurately and faithfully conveyed.Through this translation practice,the author has obtained a deeper understanding of the translation of travel texts and Functional Equivalence Theory.At the same time,the author has also improved her translation practice skill and the ability to search literature,which has laid a solid practical and theoretical foundation for future translation practice.The Chinese translation of such travel texts will help Chinese readers understand the Qing society at that time from the perspective of Westerners,thus promoting the economic,political and cultural exchanges between China and the West in the new era.Therefore,the author hopes that this translation report can provide some reference for the translation of travel texts.