ABSTRACT
Manchu Ulabun is a form of narrative literature created and related by Manchu people, mainly inherited through word of mouth; however, it is facing extinction with the passing away of these aged inherited Manchu storytellers. After years of fieldwork, over 50 Ulabun books have been rescued and published, with a couple of books translated into English. A large majority of the rescued works, however, are still unknown to international readers. In order to make the cultural heritage known to the world and improve the accuracy of future Ulabun translation, a project was initiated in 2018. This chapter investigates the following two issues: term extraction in Chinese and term translation in English, which constitute the key steps in constructing the term database of Manchu Ulabun. The Ulabun series of books was taken as the source text; the SDL MultiTerm management tool was utilized as the main research instrument to extract terms. After verification by professional experts, over 3800 terms were selected to construct the Manchu Ulabun term database, covering a variety of topics. With cultural translation theory as the guiding theoretical framework, four translation methods have been adopted to translate the terms in the database, especially terms with cultural connotations. It is expected that the research practice may establish parameters for the construction of future ethnic minority cultural term databases.
