On The Application Of Thick Translation In E-C Academic Translation

This paper is a translation practice report,based on two papers selected from the collection of papers Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies published by John Benjamins Publishing Company in 2008,namely are Translation Constraints and the"Sociological Turn" in Literary Translation Studies and A Problematic Concept?.This collection of papers,a homage to Gideon Toury,is one of the important academic literatures in contemporary translation studies.The selected two papers are on the theme of translation constraints and culture translation respectively,both of which possessprofound insight.In this report,by analyzing the cases in translation practice,the author discusses how to use thick translation method to translate academic papers better.Thick translation,put forward by Africa-American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah,is a translation strategy and a translation methodology.By adding annotations and accompanying glosses,it put the text in a rich cultural and language context to provide target readers background information,thus,the readers can understand and appreciate the text more easily.Usually,thick translation is applied in the text that contains large numbers of explanatory material,such as literature text.At present,this translation method has been accepted by lots of overseas scholars,and numbers of researches have been done on thick translation both in China and abroad.The report is divided into the following five parts:Chapter Ⅰ is the description of the project,mainly introducing the background information of academic translation study and relative information of translation project.Chapter Ⅱ introduces the translation process,including preparation before the translation,specific translation process,and the revision of the translation.In the introduction of preparation work,the author also gives the information of thick translation.Chapter III is the case study.At the beginning,the author introduces the reasons for adopting thick translation,and then analyzes the examples according to different forms of thick translation they use.At last,the author summarizes the function of thick translation and the aspects that need to notice when adopting thick translation in academic translation.Chapter IV is the conclusion of this report.Through this translation practice,the author considers that adopting thick translation method in academic translation has following advantages:First,this translation method can provide readers cultural and academic background information that are unfamiliar to target readers,thus,readers’reading difficulties will be reduced.Second,it can help the translator to show his/her subjectivity and to keep a responsible attitude,thus,the accuracy of the translation can be maintained.However,this translation method also has its deficiency.How to decide the"thickness" of thick translation in order to make readers’reading has no burden still needs further study.