On Achieving Information Equivalence In Translation-A Translation Report On The Silk Road

The MTI translation project comprises two parts:selected translation of The Silk Road and its critical commentary. The translation report focuses on analyzing approaches that translator adopts in the translation, and discuss how to achieve information equivalence in translation.The Silk Road, from which Chapter 3 The Biological Silk Road and Chapter 4 The Technological Silk Road are taken as the source text. The content of these two chapters ranges from wine, domestication of wild horses to grape plantation and dumplings, is full of distinctive things. As a bi-lingual work, The Silk Road contains lots of historical proper nouns, which makes it more difficult to achieve information equivalence.The critical commentary consists of three sections. The first section makes a brief introduction of the original text, the author and the significance of the project; the second presents its theoretical framework and translation difficulties; the third illustrates how strategies are properly applied in the translation. The project is conducted under the guidance of Eugene A. Nida’s Theory of Functional Equivalence, which aims at "reproducing in the receptor language the closet natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style".By analyzing typical examples in the translation, this MTI translation report compares approaches of domestication and foreignization and analyzes two strategies of foreignization—transliteration with footnotes, and literal translation with marginal notes. It suggests that foreignization, especially transliteration and literal translation are more effective in achieving information equivalence.Undoubtedly, the whole process of translation is slow, painstaking but rewarding. It is hoped that this project will open a door to those who are intensely concerned about the past, the present and the future of the Silk Road; meanwhile, it will be of great guidance and reference significance to the similar translation in the future.