Explicitation Strategies For Word Translation In Historical Texts

The report is based on the translation of The Invention of International Order which is written by Glenda Sluga who is a professor of International History at the University of Sydney.The book describes the establishment of the international order in Europe after the Napoleonic wars.After the Napoleonic wars,several major European countries,including Austria,England and Russia,established the Concert of Europe together,which aimed to maintain peace and order in Europe.The new coalition planted the seeds for today’s international order,wedding the idea of a durable peace to multilateralism,diplomacy,philanthropy,and making Europe its center,also having a historical significance that cannot be ignored in the establishment of the modern international order.Therefore,the translation of this book can make Chinese readers learn more about the origin and the development of the current international order and prompt readers to think further.The Invention of International Order is a historical text.In the process of translating this book,the translator finds that the book contains a large amount of knowledge about European history,politics and many proper nouns such as the names of conferences,treaties and people’s names.Therefore,the application of explicitation strategies is essential to accurately convey information to Chinese readers.Explicitation was initially proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet.It means that the translator presents information of the original text in a clearer way,which can increase the clarity of the target language,make readers to understand the original work clearly and accurately and reduce reading difficulty.This report reviews previous studies on explicitation strategies and analyzes the translated text with some representative examples in the translation to show that explicitation strategies are instructive in the process of English-Chinese translation.In order to solve related translation problems,the translator adopts four explicitation strategies when translating words of the source text to make readers understand easily.The four explicitation strategies are addition,extension,conversion and annotation.This report consists of five chapters: Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the research background,the background of the selected topic and text analysis.Chapter 2 is the task process,including pre-translation,while-translation and post-translation.Chapter3 is a literature review,introducing the definition and development of explicitation strategies.Chapter 4 is the case analysis,applying relevant strategies to solve the difficulties encountered in translation.Chapter 5 is to summarize the gains and shortcomings of this translation.