A Report On The Translation Of Taking The Reins:Institutional Transformation In Higher Education （Chapter1）

In the new era,higher education in China faces a series of new challenges which urge Chinese colleges and universities to embark on institutional transformation so as to better fulfill their academic and social roles.American colleges and universities began their exploration of institutional transformation earlier than their counterparts in China.Many of their findings are well worth reading and studying for campus administrators in China.The translator was assigned by Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press to translate Taking the Reins: Institutional Transformation in Higher Education,which is an academic monograph helping its audience better understand institutional transformation.The original text comes from the first chapter of this book,which mainly analyzes the context for institutional transformation,and introduces the research basis of this book,the American Council on Education Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation.Since the original text falls into the category of informative text,the information theory introduced by Eugene A.Nida to translation study was adopted as the guideline during the translation process.Redundancy and noise are the core concepts in the information theory.Redundancy refers to the content that does not add new information but contributes to improving the accuracy and efficiency of information transmission.Due to different linguistic rules and cultural contexts,the literal translation of the original text will cause redundancy deficiency or sentence component surplus in the target text.Therefore,the translation methods,amplification and omission,were adopted to adjust redundancy to an appropriate degree.In this way,redundancy equivalence can be achieved,which contributes to the realization of dynamic equivalence between the original text and the target text.Moreover,noise in translation refers to anything that obstructs the process of information transmission.Therefore,the translation method of conversion was employed to reduce the interference of linguistic noise and cultural noise.A variety of vivid examples are given to analyze how the translation methods were applied to solve the translation problems and improve the accuracy and efficiency of information transmission.Apart from the analyses of translation difficulties and translation methods,the translation practice report also reviews the whole translation process consisting of four stages,namely pre-translation,translation,discussion and proofreading.Moreover,at the end of the report,the translator summarizes not only the problems still existing in the translation and requiring further polishing,but also what she has learned from this translation task.