A Report On The E-C Translation Of Pliny’s Roman Economy:Natural History,Innovation,and Growth (Chapter 5)

This is an English-Chinese translation report on the fifth chapter of Pliny’s Roman Economy: Natural History,Innovation,and Growth,whose author is Richard Saller.Published in 2022,this book has had no Chinese translation version available hitherto.In this book,based on Pliny’s Natural History,the author Saller discusses the economic development in Ancient Rome,and cites a large number of historical facts from Natural History,which are objective and truthful in content.This translation practice report explores the translation methods of economic history texts under the guidance of Skopos Theory,aiming to provide useful reference for specific problems encountered in translating such texts.Meanwhile,through reading this translation,readers who are interested in this topic can make summaries and reflections on economic development.In the process of translation,two kinds of translation difficulties the translator has mainly encountered are at lexical level and syntactic level.At the lexical level,the source text embraces multitudinous proper nouns,such as names of people and places,polysemy,pronouns as well as parts of speech.In an effort to produce precise translations of these words,the translator adopts the methods of footnotes,choice of contextual meanings,translation of referents and conversion of parts of speech.At the syntactic level,the translation of attributive clauses and long and difficult sentences increases the difficulty of translation.For these kinds of sentences,the translator mainly uses division,following the original syntactic order and reinventing sentence structures.From the translation practice,the translator has gained a lot.The translation of economic history texts is intended to present historical facts,and to take history as a mirror to guide the development of contemporary economy.The translator hopes that the translation of Chapter Five of Pliny’s Roman Economy: Natural History,Innovation and Growth can provide some reference value for the future study of the economic history of Ancient Rome and the translation of such kind of texts.