Abstract:
This Master Graduation Thesis focuses on a Technical translation, from Chinese to Italian, of two articles and an episode of a documentary, concerning the use of jade in the funeral system in ancient China.
The main topic is the discovery of the mysterious jade burial suits in ancient Chinese tombs. The articles also offer a rich explanation about the system of use of this suits, focusing on the specific period of the Western Han dynasty.
The introduction consist of an explanation about the importance of jade in China, its meaning and its system of use across centuries and dynasties up to date .
The introduction is followed by three translations. The first one is an article, published by the “Zhongguo wenhua huabao” , an illustrated journal about culture and arts of China, in 2008. The second one is an article published by the “Zhongyuan wenwu bianjibu”, an academic journal about archaeology and museums, edited by the Henan Museum. The third one, finally, is the translation of the subtitles of an episode taken by an eight-episodes famous documentary about jade, “ The jade legend” broadcasted by CCTV in 2012.
All the texts taken into account are specialized texts, oriented towards an expert target audience. The language is technical and professional , full of references to different fields as history and archaeology, sometimes sustained by images that can help the reader in the process of understanding.
The translation process fills up the main part of the thesis. Firstly, it focuses on the analysis of the features of the source texts, the function and the text type, the dominant and the model reader. Finally it provides the explanation of the macro and microstrategy adopted by the translator to solve the linguistic and the extra-linguistic problems encountered during the cultural and linguistic translation from Chinese to Italian.
