Study on the Translation of Official Titles in Qing Dynasty from Perspective of Semantic and Communicative Translation Theory
Abstract
This paper aims to probe into the translation of official titles in Qing dynasty on the basis of Peter Newmark’s theory of semantic translation and communicative translation, in quest of efficient ways for translating official titles and such culture-specific words.
Officials, as vital components of ancient Chinese bureaucracy, have accumulated for thousands of years. They are in a great number and contain a great deal of cultural information. It is a big issue to transfer the abundant cultural information loaded in the titles clearly and reliably in the translation. This thesis firstly provides a general introduction of bureaucracy in ancient China and official system in Qing dynasty. Then for the sake of analysis, the official titles are divided into three groups, that is, civil officials in the central government, civil officials in the local government and the military officials. Next, through a comparative analysis between the historical background, position, and responsibilities of officials of different ranks and the English names is conducted, the author summarizes the translation strategies and applies the theory of semantic and communicative translation to analyze these methods and their effects.
Through the detailed analysis, a conclusion is obtained that when translating official titles and such cultural-specific terms, the translator adopts flexible strategies according to the features of the texts and the comprehension of the Target Language (hereafter referred to as TL) readership. Some titles are translated in a semantic way, trying to retain the form of Source Language (hereafter referred to as SL); some are translated communicatively, facilitating the TL readers to understand; and others are outcomes of combination of semantic and communicative translation. Because of the great difficulties of ancient Chinese official titles and huge disparities between Chinese and English culture, most official titles are translated in a communicative way, taking the TL reader reception as primary consideration.
Key words: official titles, translation strategies, communicative translation, semantic translation
，英语论文，英语论文范文 |
