A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Historical Materials On The South China Sea Islands Dispute

The report is based on the sub-project translation practice project,"Archives of the South China Sea Issue Stored in Britain:Arrangement and Translation(20th Century)",of "Archives of the South China Sea Issue Stored in Britain:Arrangement and Research",Major Project on Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education(Grant NO.:21JZD035).The primary requirement of the project is that the translation should be faithful,which coincides with the translation requirement of informative texts in Text Typology of Katharina Reiss.In the whole translation process,in addition to preparing appropriate theory to guide translation practice,it is also necessary to analyze the source text and parallel texts,and prepare various translation tools in order to successfully carry out subsequent translation.Besides,proofreading after translation is a significant step to further improve the quality of translation.Case analysis,the important part of the report,analyzes the key and difficult points in translation from two aspects of vocabulary and sentence with typical cases.Combined with Text Typology,the author discusses the commonly used translation methods of proper nouns,telegram briefs,abbreviations and words with implicit information at the lexical level,and discusses five translation methods,namely linear translation,inverse translation,division and adjustment,voice conversion,and integrated translation method in Chinese translation of complex sentences in diplomatic archives at the sentence level.Based on the above analysis,this report mainly comes to the following conclusions.First,translation tasks require quality control before,during and after the translation,and preparatory work for translation and post-translation proofreading cannot be ignored.Second,the proper combination of theoretical guidance under the premise of complying with the project translation requirements will provide strong support for the selection of appropriate translation methods in practice.Text Typology proposes that the translation of informative texts emphasizes grasping the logic of the source text,and in consequence taking the guarantee of the translation logic as a specific translation goal is conducive to further choice of the appropriate translation methods.Third,translators should adopt appropriate translation methods to reflect national consciousness in their translation.The report is expected to demonstrate the guiding significance of Text Typology to Chinese translation of diplomatic documents,and provide Chinese reference materials for both historical research and safeguarding China’s rights in the South China Sea.