A Report On The E-C Translation Of Eric Purchase’s Essay Collection The Future Of Reading(Excerpt)

In today’s fast-paced life,reading is an effective way for people to release pressure and strengthen themselves.As a familiar literary genre,essays can move people’s hearts and convey spiritual power through words.This is a report on the translation of Chapters 9 and 10 of The Future of Reading,an essay collection by Eric Purchase,a contemporary American writer and scholar.The translator expects to provide references for other translators of essay texts by summarizing relevant translation experience.The Future of Reading focuses on detailed discussions on the function of reading based on the analysis of stories from different fields,thus giving the readers new insights.With clear logic and plain language,this book is suitable for all readers interested in reading and literature due to its academic and practical functions.Guided by Nida’s “Functional Equivalence” Theory,this report analyses the translation examples at lexical,syntactic,and discourse levels based on the grasp of contextual information and stylistic features of the source text.The report shows that when translating culture-loaded words,terminologies,and polysemous words,the translator should pay enough attention to the context and cultural background;he or she may use translation skills,such as addition,to achieve equivalence in information.As for the translation of syntactic structure,rhetoric devices,and rhyming effect,the translator should take into account linguistic-structural characteristics and the readers’ cognitive differences;he or she may employ addition,free translation,and structural reorganization,to achieve functional equivalence between the source text and the targeted text.To achieve explicit and implicit coherence in the discourse of the target text,the translator should resort to cohesive devices in English and idiomatic expressions in Chinese and applies “addition” to achieve equivalence at the discourse level.The translator hopes to provide references for the translation of essays based on the discussion of this report.