A Report On The Translation Of The Perils Of Interpreting:The Extraordinary Lives Of Two Translators Between Qing China And The British Empire (Chapter 13&14)

The historical work The Perils of Interpreting:The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and the British Empire written by Henrietta Harrison,a professor of Chinese History at the University of Oxford,discusses both the diplomatic history between Qing China and the British empire as well as the history of diplomatic translation of the two nations from a micro-historical standpoint,highlighting the influence of political,economic,and cultural factors on translators’interpreting and translation activities.The author also emphasises the importance of interpreters of that period,arguing that their skills,political position,and life experience can have a profound impact on foreign affairs activities.The source text of this report comes from Chapters 13&14 of this book.The translation cases are analysed from the three levels,which are word,sentence and text.Lexically,the translator,by taking into account the linguistic features,specific contexts,and the acceptance level of the audience,aims to reproduce the main idea,linguistic forms,as well as the styles of the source text and clear the reading barriers for readers by the translation strategies such as,extension,conversion,and substitution for the key words.After fully comprehending the logic of the source material,the translator syntactically evaluates the translation methods of long and difficult sentences,passive sentences,and inanimate-subject sentences,and faithfully retells the original thoughts with sentences in the expression styles of native Chinese.The translator also adopts the method of back translation to reproduce the linguistic characteristics as well as historical characteristics and cultural meaning of Chinese sentences translated by the author from Chinese works.Textually,the translator analyses the translation methods of reference along with logical cohesion from the perspective of discourse cohesion and coherence by incorporating the differences between English and Chinese languages and thinking patterns of the two nations to improve discourse coherence.The translation practice demonstrates that in order to produce a high-quality translation,the translator must possess a great deal of knowledge in a variety of fields and comprehend the distinctions between the two nations,both in terms of language forms and thinking patterns.Besides,the translator needs to choose proper translation methods based on the context,and promote the mastery of translation theories.