A Study Of E-C Translation Of Technical Texts From The Perspective Of Reiss’ Theory On Text Typology And Translation As Exemplified By Specification For Road Lighting Installation

This thesis is aimed at studying the principles and methods for translating English technical texts into Chinese from the perspective of Reiss’s Theory on Text Typology and Translation as exemplified by Specification for Road Lighting Installation.Reiss divides texts into three main types, the informative, the expressive and the operative. Among them, the informative text, which aims at conveying contents, should be translated "according to the sense and meaning" in order to maintain the invariability of these contents. To this end, plain language without unnecessary redundancy should be adopted and it may be necessary that what is conveyed implicitly in the SL text should be explicated in the TLThe research material of the thesis, Piling Works, is Section10excerpted from Specification for Road Lighting Installation, a text of operating instructions for installing road lighting facilities, that is, explanatory descriptions for carrying out the relevant installation. Categorized mainly as an informative text according to Reiss’ classification, it focuses on transmitting information. In translating this kind of material, the principles of faithfulness, correctness and readability should be followed; in other words, give much attention to the truthfulness of the content, be reader-centered and conform to the Chinese habit of expression. As far as the translation methods are concerned, explication, literal translation of technical terms, division of long sentences and conversion of passive sentences into active ones are adopted so as to clearly and effectively transmit the information of the source language text and, as such, to achieve its function for a specification.