Paratext Translation Quality Assessment: The Annals of Imperial Rome as a Case Study

Genette (1987) describes a paratext as the threshold between a reader and a text, which presents the text to the readers, and influences how the text is received. Based on Genette’s definition, this study makes further exploration of paratext translation and proposes that paratexts in translated works are constituted of the paratext in the original text and the additional parts from the translator and other participants. Mainly based on the translation assessment model proposed by Katharina Reiss, this essay suggests a three-principle model for the paratext translation quality assessment in historical text. Then mainly taking footnotes in The Annals as a case study, the essay explores the fundamental factors that influence the paratext translation quality in the historical text, and suggests taking the principles of completeness, preciseness, and conciseness into consideration.


Introduction
The concept of paratext is defined by French scholar Gérard Genette in his book Seuils (Thresholds) in 1987. In this book, Genette offers a detailed description of the feature and function of each kind of paratext ranging from titles, epigraphs, prefaces, notes to the public and private epitext.
According to his definition, the paratext is what enables a text to become a book and to be offered as such to its readers and, more generally, to the public (Genette, 1999, p. 1). From the angle of spatial variables, Genette divides paratext into peritext and epitext. Peritexts are generally around the text or within the same volume, which primarily includes the prefaces, epigraphs, forewords, titles, notes, illustrations, index, postfaces, etc., while epitexts separate from the core text or locates outside the book, usually with the help of the media or private communications including interviews, conversations, letters, diaries, and others.
Surely, Genette also takes spatial, temporal, substantial, pragmatic, functional variables as well as the author's intention into consideration when he tries to classify paratexts. His concept of paratext with the criteria of spatial variables is accepted by most scholars. Furthermore, he regards translation as paratext of the original text, which raised heated discussions among scholars about the relationship between translation and paratext. Kathryn Batchelor makes deep analysis and discussion in Translation and Paratexts. She concludes that translated texts should be considered as a text in its own right, with its paratexts. Batchelor's viewpoints provide us a different way to look at translation and paratext, especially the paratext in the translated text. At the same time, when we strive to study the paratext in the translated text, there comes an essential question: what does paratext translation mean exactly? Does it contain only the paratext from the original text? Or it includes the paratext from the original text as well as those from translators, editors, and all of the additional paratexts added in the translated text?
This paper firstly approves Batchelor's claim that the translated text should be viewed as an independent with its paratext in the target language and culture. Based on this principle, paratext translation in my study covers the paratexts from the original text as well as paratexts added by translators, to be specific, it primarily focuses on the peritexts in the translated text.
Actually, according to Batchelor's statistics (2018, pp. 26−156), more than 100 English essays and several edited  Vol. 11, No. 6;2021 time and name in He's version. As we all know, time and names are critical information for historical text, as the errors of time and names in the footnotes can mislead or even confuse readers. One typical example could be shown in the following part: Another death was that of Junia Tertulia, …a full sixty-three years after Philippi 3 .
[3] 菲利披之役发生在罗马建城 712 年，即公元前 61 年。 (Tacitus, 2007, p. 414) According to the context here, the year of Junia's death is 22 A.D., a full sixty-three years after Philippi, which indicates that the war of Philippi may happen in 41 B.C. instead of 61 B.C. offered in the footnote. Undoubtedly, mistakes like that could only make readers confusing, which is obviously against the principle of preciseness, and not reader-friendly.
Lastly, when we apply the principle of conciseness to analyze these two versions, we can find that Wang's version is full of irrelevant or incoherent information in the footnotes. In the following parts, two typical cases will be exhibited and analyzed.
Another death was that of Junia Tertulla, niece of Cato, wife of Gaius Cassius, sister of Brutus… 还有一个人去世了，她就是优尼娅·特尔图拉，她是加图的外甥女、盖乌斯·卡西乌斯的妻子，马 尔库斯·布鲁图斯的妹妹 2 …… [2] 加图的姊妹谢尔维里娅起初嫁给了马尔库斯·尤尼乌斯·布鲁图斯，后来又嫁给戴奇姆斯·尤尼 乌斯·西拉努斯。她第一次结婚时生下了暗杀过凯撒的布鲁图斯，第二次结婚后生下了卡西乌斯的 妻子特尔图拉。 (Tacitus, 1997, p. 194) From the context of the original text, about Junia Tertulla, we have already known that she is the niece of Cato, wife of Gaius Cassius, sister of Brutus. The original text provides readers an adequate introduction about her to help readers to understand the context. And there are no footnotes in the English version, but Wang chooses to offer a quite long footnote here to explain the two marriages of Junia's mother. If readers stop to read this footnote about Junia's mother, they may find it's not helpful for them to understand the death of Julia. The question is therefore that the function of the footnotes in translated works is not to tell readers everything translators know, but depending on if it is helpful to understand the context and make the reading easier, quicker, and more convenient. If translators can't follow this rule, the footnotes they added may cause obstacles or confusion instead of providing guidance and help.
If relevance is the first thing that the principle of conciseness requires, clearness and coherence are undoubtedly secondarily essential elements that need to be stressed. We can believe that high-quality paratexts are just reader-friendly, and they help readers tackle queries with efficient and clear methods instead of causing more puzzles. In quite a lot of situations, however, paratexts are merely overdone.
This year being the eight-hundredths since Rome's foundation, Secular Games were celebrated, sixty-four years after those of Augustus.

Conclusion
Although Genette gives a persuasive definition of paratext, he doesn't take too much effort to explore the issue of paratext translation. By providing necessary background information like time, place, introduction to some relevant historical characters, paratext is an essential part of historical text. Paratext translation plays an important role in the quality of historical text translation, but problems in paratext translation have been ignored for a long time. This essay focuses on exploring the elements that influence the quality of paratext translation in ijel.ccsenet.org International Journal of English Linguistics Vol. 11, No. 6;2021 a historical text and put forward a simplified but manipulable model to help assessing the quality of historical paratext translation.
Furthermore, this essay tries to define the paratext translation and points out the significance of paratext translation in historical work by analyzing its distinguished features. To make further exploration, the author takes the paratext translation of The Annals as a case study and suggests considering the completeness, preciseness, and conciseness as the three-principle paratext TQA model for historical text.
In short, after reviewing the previous TQA models, we can know that it's too difficult to establish a TQA model for all types of texts. This study, therefore, contributes to build a paratext quality assessment model for historical text in hope of improving reader-friendly paratext translation.
In this way, this paper aims to provide a new angel to think about the quality of paratext translation in the historical text. At the same time, historical text could be considered as one of the most important academic texts. Therefore, the three-principle model established in this paper may bring inspirations for the academic texts in other disciplines, such as philosophy, economics, politics, etc.