Abstract

In the world we are living in today, photography has become one of the most important modern cultural elements. Visual culture is an important part of contemporary culture. Increasing intensity of images in life leads to increasing demands for image interpretation and research. Photography is delivered by Western colonialists to China in late 19th century. After 100 years, its “exotic” status is not changed, the discussion over photography and research materials on photography are mainly based on translated foreign books. Although photography in China, has more than a century’s development, the research on visual culture and photography theories still lies on the level of “catching up with Westerns” due to the special history of our country. In this context, the analyses on translation photographic history books in China plays a positive role in improving the translation of books of this type as well as promoting the introduction of western contemporary culture.

In this paper the author studied some representative translation books in China in following aspects:

Firstly, the paper introduces the classification of the books on photography. Secondly, the paper gives introductions on current situation of translated photographic history books. Then the paper lists the translation phenomena of the photographic history book in China. After finding out the phenomena, the paper reveals the reasons beneath the surface of phenomenon in translation. And finally the author gives suggestions for better translation of photographic history books.

Key words: photographic history books, translation, reasons, suggestions

摘        要

在当下我们生活的世界，摄影已然成为了重要的现代文化元素之一，影像文化是当代文化的重要组成部分。影像在生活中越来越密集的出现，对于影像解读的探索需求也越来越大。摄影从19世纪末期被西方殖民者带到中国之后的100多年间，其“舶来品”的地位并没有显著的变化，关于摄影的讨论和研究资料也以翻译外国书籍为主。虽然摄影在中国的发展已经有了一个多世纪的时间，但是由于其本身富于变化的发展特点，以及我国特殊的历史和国情，对于摄影史和影像文化的探讨始终处于追赶西方的状态之中。在这样的背景下，研究世界范围内摄影史图书在中国的翻译现状对于更好地完善此类图书的翻译，促进对国外先进文化的介绍引进有着积极的意义。
在此论文中，作者对当下国内具有一定代表性和参考意义的摄影史类图书的翻译进行了如下几方面的研究工作：首先,对当下国内具有一定代表性和参考意义的摄影史类图书译作进行分类;然后,对不同分类下具体图书的翻译状况做出了详细的介绍；在对不同分类的图书完成介绍之后，论文对当下摄影史类图书翻译过程中的现象做出了描述，继而研究在此类图书翻译现象中背后的问题原因；最后，为推动国内的摄影史类图书翻译提出了改善意见。

关键词：摄影史类图书，翻译，原因，建议