Future Files: A Brief History Of The Next 50 Years (excerpt) Translation Report

In this translation project, an excerpt of the book: Future Files: A Brief History of the Next50 Years, written by Australian Futurist writer Richard Watson is selected as a text to be translated. It is the representive work of western futurism and the most important work of Future File series.Richard Watson is a writer, lecturer, futurist and scenario planner from Australia. His most famous work is future files series. He mainly devotes himself to helping individuals and organizations plan for the future and ever holds position in Cambridge University, Imperial College,London Business School, Coca Cola, General Electric Co. IBM and Shell and so on. He also writes The future: 50 ideas you really need to know and Besides, he is the initiator of website: nowandnext.com.Future Files: A Brief History of the Next 50 Years introduces the five powers that will shape the world in the future: population, global connectivity, power shift eastwards, GRIN technology and the environment. This book contains kinds of predictions but the aim of the writer is not to predict the future. The writer thinks that anyone who says they can do this is either a liar or a fool. The purpose of this book is to arouse the readers to seem familiar things in a new light and unfamiliar things with greater clarity. The real objective of the book is to broaden perspectives and widen horizons, to make as many individuals and organizations as possible think twice about where they are going and to consider whether, once they get there, it will be worth staying.After finishing translating this text, a Chinese version translated by Zhang Qing published by Jinghua Press was found but the important “introduction” part was not translated and the translation quality is not that good. Therefore, the reason why Zhang version made mistakes was concluded and some revising suggestions are offered in this report. Besides, under the instruction of functional theory, translation strategies and ways are studied from lexical, syntactic and rhetoric aspects, besides, the translation text is showed in the report.The translation report is divided into five parts. Text selection, project purpose and significance are briefly introduced in chapter one. Translation process is recommended in chapter two. The reason why Zhang Qing version making mistakes are analyzed and revising suggestions are offered in chapter three. Target text is presented from lexical,syntactic and rhetoric aspects in chapter four and studies how to achieve fidelity and coherence of the target text under the instruction of functional theory. Translation experience and the shortcoming of this article are summarized in chapter five.