A Report On The C-E Translation Of Chinese Customs:An Illustrated Guide Wuhan(Excerpts)

As a non-literary book,Chinese Customs:An Illustrated Guide Wuhan provides a comprehensive introduction to culture and customs in Wuhan.It is hoped that the translation of this book might promote Chinese culture,letting people around the globe know the customs and traditions and thaw the misunderstandings and biases against some people and places in China.This book is informative and descriptive with a wide range of topics and fields covering geography,history,mythology,folklore,transportation,and architecture.During the translation,the translator encountered a variety of difficulties and challenges,such as slang,idioms,proper nouns,dialects,Chinese four-character phrases,cultural-loaded words,allusions,metaphors,similes,and quotes from classic Chinese texts,technical terms in different fields,and poems.Based on Peter Newmark’s semantic and communicative translation theory,semantic translation and communicative translation are either separately used in different cases or are applied comprehensively in one case.Semantic translation methods such as transliteration and literal translation were mainly employed to render proper nouns,dialects,color words,food names,poems,and nursery rhymes.Generally,in translating not-so-heavilyculture-loaded passages,communicative translation methods have been used more frequently and widely,which include paraphrasing,amplification,omission,clarification,generalization,conversion,substitution,correction,and restructuring.The comprehensive application of semantic and communicative translation methods such as transliteration with paraphrasing is adopted in culture-loaded words,Chinese four-character phrases,and rhetorical devices.