A Report On The Translation Of The First Universities:Studium Generale And The Origins Of University Education In Europe(Chapters Eight To Nine)

This report is based on the English-Chinese translation project of the historical text,The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe,in which Chapters Eight and Nine are excerpted as the study material,presenting the students’ lives and the way to obtain the master’s degree in medieval universities.Guided by the functional equivalence theory proposed by Eugene Nida,the translator has explored the problems at lexical,syntactic and discourse levels,analyzed the causes of difficulties and offered corresponding solutions.In the report,27 typical cases are analyzed and different translation techniques are employed in translation.At lexical level,a faithful and acceptable translated version is rendered through the addition of background information,omission of English words superfluous in Chinese,conversion of the part of speech as well as the application of Chinese four-character structures.Based on different syntactic features between the two languages,three techniques are utilized,including the division of long sentences,rearrangement of word order and conversion of the English passive voice into the Chinese active voice to make the target text more fluent and readable.At discourse level,the logical relations of the discourse are clarified from the perspectives of cohesion and coherence to deliver a more natural and coherent translated text.This translation practice is expected to help target readers better understand the origins and development of medieval universities,and provide a reference for the translation of relevant historical texts.