A Translation Report On The Informative Text From The Perspective Of Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory

As a relatively typical and common text type,the informative text has received considerable attentions and been much researched in recent years.Especially since the first presentation of Peter Newmark’s communicative translation theory,the translation of such kind of texts,under the guidance of the communicative translation theory,has already been extended to more specific informative texts gradually,for example,the academic monographs.Its main purpose is to achieve the effective transmission and communication of the information of the source texts.The translation material of this thesis is selected from the Chapter 4 of the book,Pattern and Repertoire in History.It was co-published by Bertrand M.Roehner and Tony Syme in 2002,and also it is a standard informative text.The chosen Chapter 4 mainly talks about the introduction and comparative study between the American Revolution and some related major historical events,with the main clue of comparison between the American Revolution and the outbreaks of the revolutions in Latin America.The reason why this chapter is chosen as the translation source material includes two aspects:on one hand,the information is reliable since indeed there are historical data for reference and check.Moreover,it is easier to understand its language than that of the scientific texts;on the other hand,this chosen chapter is extracted from an academic monograph,which belongs to the category of the informative texts.The communicative translation theory and practical translation researches can be better combined if such kind of an informative text is selected,and also the understandings and applications of the theory will be strengthened in the process of translation.The main body of the thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is an introduction of the research background,objective,signific,ance and the thesis structure.The second chapter is a general introduction of the source text,which is divided into two parts:firstly,it introduces the source text and its authors;secondly,it introduces the linguistic features of the source text on lexical level,syntactic level and textual level separately.The third chapter is theoretical foundation,which focuses on the introduction,development and application of the communicative translation theory,as well as parts of the researches on its applications in the translation of informative texts at home and abroad,after a brief introduction of Peter Newmark and his main translation theories.The fourth chapter is case analysis under the direction of the communicative translation theory,presenting examples with specific translation techniques.The last chapter is the conclusion,which is also a self-assessment of this thesis and the practical translation,proposing some suggestions for the future practices.In fact,the translator’s attitudes and emotions should also be reflected in the choice of words,sentences and even textual coherence,in order to achieve the goal of the communicative translation theory better and arouse the target readers to produce the same reactions as that of the source language readers.Of course,it is absolutely not the speculations at random,besides this,the translator can’t always treat himself as an intermediate.On the contrary,the translator should place himself in other’s conditions,and then regard himself as a reader,choosing the most appropriate way of translation for the target receptors.