A Report On Chinese Translation Of China(Excerpt)

China is an English book about Chinese history written by Charles William Campbell(1861-1927),former Chinese secretary at the British Legation in Beijing.The translation of this book can reveal the views and acceptance of foreign officials stationed in China in modern times.This book consists of two sections,“Political History” and “Social and Political Conditions”.The section on political history is in turn divided into two subsections,an overview of Chinese history from the late 18 th century to the establishment,in 1912,of the Chinese Republic,and a more detailed treatment of the republic in the period from 1912 to 1917.The author selects the fifth chapter of the political history section: Reign of Kuang-Hsu,1875-1908,which mainly narrated a series of major events in late Qing Dynasty including the Murder of Margary,the Sino French war,the Sino Japanese War,the Boxer Movement and the signing of a series of treaties.As an important historical document,the source text involves a large number of Wade-Giles Romanization,title terms and multilingual expressions.Based on with back translation theory,the author sorts out the process of dealing with these translation difficulties,and introduces in detail the process,problems and results of translation practice and summarizes the following translation experience: firstly,a translator should identify the historical context,and determine the translation of proper nouns such as names and places according to the historical facts at that time;secondly,a translator should identify the actual meaning of the original text and ensure that the translation conforms to the real existence of Chinese history;thirdly,a translator should correct the erroneous information in the original text and supplement the historical details by adding notes.Through this translation task,the author understands that the ability to retrieve information and verify historical facts is very important in the process of back translation.