A Report On E-C Translation Of Papermaking:The History And Technique Of An Ancient Craft (Chapter 4) From The Perspective Of Hermeneutics Fourfold Translation Motion Theory

Dard Hunter(1883-1966),an American expert in the hand paper field,had taken over forty years to complete the work of Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft characterized by writing materials from the earliest papermaking period to the modern papermaking technology.As the hand mold is essential to traditional papermaking,the translator opts for “Chapter 4 The Hand Mold” of the original as her translation task,which is pertaining to the origin and development of the mold for ancient papermaking and entails the author’s viewpoint of identifying paper’s date and location via the research in field trips and experiments in person.This work is of great significance to diffusing traditional Chinese papermaking culture.Translation of Chapter 4 will not only bring the wisdom and charm of this ancient craft to the target readers but also provide the useful reference for today’s ancient paper research.Through an in-depth analysis,the translator concludes that those professionals with papermaking background at colleges are mainly responsible for transmitting this old craft’s culture.Since cultural transmission is preconditioned by receivers’ acceptance,the analysis of target readers’ requirements is conducted,by which the translator sets a goal of making an acceptable and readable version so as to achieve the objective of transmitting papermaking culture.Based on George Steiner’s thoughts on translation,the translator gives full play to the initiative to adopt translation strategies and skills flexibly,i.e.,domestication strategy and free translation skill for technical content,alienation strategy and literal translation skill for literary content,as well as cultural annotations addition.Domestication and free translation are used to ensure acceptability and readability of the version,literal translation and alienation to arose reading interest as well as to ensure faithfulness,and cultural annotations to convey the history and culture of this ancient craft.With the results yielded by this translation practice,the expectation is to supply a salutary lesson to an English-to-Chinese translation of similar texts,and meanwhile,to offer an “other’s perspective” to “telling well the Chinese story”featured by traditional techniques”.