A Report On The Translation Of Cities In Translation(Excerpt)

This report aims to provide a critical analysis of the translation project I undertook of Sherry Simon’s monograph Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory.By using Peter Newmark’s theory,“text typology theory”,the choices in the translation process are explored from the lexical and syntactic levels to the textual level.According to the three general text types proposed by Newmark,the material I have chosen to translate into Chinese can be classified as predominantly an informative text type,although it is a hybridized with expressive elements.Starting from the close reading of the original text,the translator has developed methods to accommodate such characteristics.It can be seen from the report the translation process is actually one of making choices,out of the target language system in consideration of those in the original,where I have comprehensively considered a series of different factors,such as text type,context,and the original text.Then,the difficulties in this report have been discussed,along with the methods and strategies to solve these problems.In the analysis of the problems in the translation process,several findings can be summarized.At the lexical level,the methods of semantic extension,annotation,etc,can convey the equivalent “truth” to the target readers,in view of the phenomenon of a large number of proper nouns,terms,culture-loaded words and polysemy in the original text.At the syntactic level,complicated sentences are to be dealt with the skills of transposition and splitting considering the informative nature of the original.At the discourse level,some expressive elements,the sub-titles and the discourse of poetry have been dealt with in light of the “three title-translation methods” and thematic progression respectively.This report has taken a critical look at the whole process of the translation project whose choices are carried out and explained in the theoretical framework of Newmark’s translation theory.It is hoped that the critical analysis of the hybridized translation text can provide some implications for the similar translation activities.