A Report On English Translation Of Communication Between China And The West(Excerpt Of Chapter One)

The translation project of Communication Between China and the West is the 2020 Chinese Academic Translation Project of the National Social Science Fund of China.The book i s mainly based on the connection between "Chinese learning" and "Western learning" in the background of cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries,and shows the complex situation of the intellectual transformation in modern China.As the fruits of the author’s academic research,the book belongs to the historical academic text with a large number of terms,culture-loaded words,classical Chinese and complex sentences.Therefore,a certain background knowledge is required,and some difficulties to the translation of this book are also brought to be solved.The functional equivalence proposed by Nida is mainly that the response of the source language readers to understand and appreciate the text is similar to that of the target language readers.Considering the characteristics of Communication Between China and the West,it is necessary for the translation to be smooth and natural in words,expressive and vivid in content and similar in readers’ reactions to achieve "functional equivalence".Therefore,the processing of technical terms,historical and cultural background knowledge and textual framework in the original text is very important.On the basis of translation practice,guided by Nida’s functional equivalence theory,this report presents how to solved the difficulties encountered in translation in the form of case analysis.Free translation,literal translation plus annotation,division and combination,and supplement of cohesive devices are adopted to achieve "functional equivalence".This report explores the characteristics and strategies of translating historical academic texts,while also exemplifying the feasibility and ’value of applying functional equivalence theory to such texts.The translator hopes that this report can provide some reference for the English translation of other historical academic texts,so as to show the achievements and progress of Chinese historiography research to a certain extent.