A Critical Commentary On The E-C Translation Of Chapter 14 Of Secret Trades.Porous Borders

The critical commentary consists of four parts:introduction,theoretical framework,translation strategies and case analysis and conclusion.It is based on the translation of the fourteenth chapter“Worlds of Illegality（1873-99）”in the book Secret Trades,Porous Borders written by Eric Tagliacozzo,an associate professor of history and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University.The selected part presents a history of the evolution of land and sea smuggling of contraband in colonial Southeast Asia from 1865 to 1915 and offers a new perspective for the study of politics and economics of Southeast Asia.Meanwhile,it shows readers the living environment and livelihood of smugglers in Southeast Asia at the end of the 19^thcentury and the beginning of the 20^thcentury.The translation project is conducted under the guidance of Peter Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation.Semantic translation is centered on the lexical meaning and syntactic structure of the source text.Communicative translation emphasizes on the transmission of the original text and the readers’response.Both of them serve as the theoretical framework in the translation report.And some translation strategies,such as amplification,conversion of part of speech,restructuring,adoption of four-character structures and idioms and change of voices are used in the translation process.Secret Trades,Porous Borders is of important referential value to learners who are to do relevant studies and are interested in the study of smuggling and its history in Southeast Asia.It is hoped that this project can also provide some reference for domestic research on smuggling in Southeast Asia.