A Report On English-Chinese Translation Of Bridge Engineering

With the booming of industrial economy and the speeding up of traffic and transportation, bridge plays an increasingly important role in promoting economic growth. In order to enhance knowledge exchanges of bridge engineering between China and English-speaking countries, satisfying mutual needs and making progress together, English for Bridge Engineering (EBE) translation becomes a must.However, the status quo of English-Chinese translation of Science and Technology remains to be further improved as previous studies on English for Science and Technology (EST) translation simply concentrate on either strategies or theories regardless of the combined effect of both and the supporting examples, if any, are ready-made and retrieved from different fields with different styles, which makes the translation methods and theories too general to be applied in one specific aspect. Hence this thesis intends to make a research on English-Chinese translation of Bridge Engineering (BE) from the perspectives of both Nida’s Equivalence Theory and related translation techniques with illustrations from translation practice in hope of bringing meaningful results to EBE translation and illuminating achievements to EST translation or even English-Chinese translation.The thesis first reviews basic concepts of Bridge Engineering, showing that Bridge Engineering primarily covers material selection, bridge design, bridge construction and bridge maintenance, and then makes an analysis on linguistic features of EBE through a wide reading. EBE, as a specific field, has its peculiar features, which are lexically professional, syntactically complex, textually cohesive, logically strict and structurally close-packed. Before the output of target texts, the translation process is briefly stated, including adequate preparation before translating, sharp weighing while translating and high-quality polish after translating. Following the Equivalence Theory and the deducted principles, the thesis probes deeply into translation methods at three levels respectively, word, sentence and text, based on a lot of typical examples from translated texts. It should be noted that the translated materials are retrieved from Elsevier Science Direct and have no Chinese version up to date. During translation, difficulties emerge and are resolved continuously. Finally, this thesis makes a summary of the translation experience and the enlightenment inspired and puts forward some advisable suggestions on account of limitations in this study in hope of pushing EBE translation to a new height.