| This is a report based on the translation of Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success by Professor Tom Eisenman from Harvard Business School.As it was published in March 2021,no Chinese version of this work is commercially available for the time being.The book principally pertains to the main causes of entrepreneurial failure and the experience of how to achieve success.Compelled by the limited space,the first three chapters are excerpted for this translation task.The source text contains approximately 20,980 English words and is rendered into more than 40,700 Chinese characters.Under the circumstance of national and governmental efforts to advocate innovation and entrepreneurship,the Chinese version of this book can broaden entrepreneurs’ international views and conduce to governmental decision-making,thereby promoting the exchange of business philosophy between China and the West.On account of both similarities and differences between Chinese and English,several prevalent course books for English-Chinese translation are perused and over ten kinds of commonly-used translation skills are employed in this task,including diction,annotation,amplification,omission,repetition,conversion,skills with set phrases,skills with passive voice,skills with negative structures,skills with attributive clause,skills with adverbial clause and skills with lengthy sentences respectively.At the textual level,the importance of topicprominence is clarified and the topic chain can be constructed in the text to achieve coherence.In addition to the common translation techniques,it is revealed that the Cognitive Construal Theory has considerable significance for some idiosyncratic linguistic structures.Five dimensions of construal invariably function as the essence: specificity,scope,background,salience and perspective.According to Wang(2008,2012),scope and background are classified into the category of cognitive domains.The author applies five dimensions of construal with translation practice,such as the selection of specificity of the construal situation,the projection of immediate scope and maximal scope,the salience of trajector and landmark,and the perspective of viewing arrangement,in the hope that cognitive linguistics can be employed to expound on the problems arising from translation,make up for the deficiencies of traditional theories and promote the development of translation studies.This translation report is comprised of five parts: Chapter One is a description of the translation task introducing the background,objective and significance of the translation project,as well as the text selection and the structure of the thesis.Chapter Two is an account of the translation process,which is roughly divided into three parts: Pre-translation,While-translation,and Post-translation.Chapter Three is a case study with commonly-used translation techniques to analyze translations primarily at the lexical,syntactic and textual levels.Chapter Four is a special case study,which introduces the Cognitive Construal Theory and its profound significance to translation practice.Chapter Five summarizes the reflections and gains in the translation practice and the problems that need to be solved. |
PDF Full Text Request