| Topics such as the visit of the Macartney Embassy to China and China’s foreign policy or activities during the Qing Dynasty have long been controversial.Scholars at home and abroad have paid great attention to the new perspectives on these topics from the 21st century.Nonetheless,the number of relative books and studies in China is small,and most foreign scholars keep blindly criticizing China for being closed and backward during the Qing Dynasty.The negative impression of China from Western countries needs to be converted.Hence,the author of this report chose The Perils of Interpreting:The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and The British Empire（selected）as the source text,a new book written by Henrietta Harrison.This book provides creative viewpoints and historical materials for the studies of the Macartney Embassy,the diplomatic history of modern China and the history of translation,which is of high academic value.In the meantime,it also offers the experience to address differences in the communication between the East and the West.This report,guided by Gideon Toury’s theory of translation norms,was to study the translation of The Perils of Interpreting:The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators Between Qing China and The British Empire（selected）.A translation exists in a social environment,and translators need to follow certain norms to ensure consistency in form and content between the source text and the target text.Toury believed that translation is governed by norms,and the target language and its culture have an effect on translation practice.He proposed three translation norms:preliminary norms,operational norms,and initial norms.Preliminary norms are linked to the selection of source texts.Operational norms are connected with specific translation strategies or techniques for discourse and sentences.Initial norms determine the adequacy and acceptability of translation.The translator selected 14 examples to analyze the translation under the guidance of the translation norms.Strategies such as omission and addition,division and combination,annotation,the shift of sentence patterns and word class,and the change of the voices were used.In translation practice,the translator not only improved the translation ability but also enriched the translation knowledge.But the translator also needs to read more parallel texts to deepen the understanding of the source text and enrich the knowledge of history,politics and diplomacy in the Qing Dynasty.Through the translation strategies and experiences summarized above,it is hoped that this translation report will analyze the difficulties encountered in translating,to provide a practical guideline for future translations of the same type. |
