The English-Chinese Translation Of The Treeline:The Last Forest And The Future Of Life On Earth (Chapter 1) And A Report On The Translation

The source text of this translation report comes from the first chapter of Ben Lawrence’s book The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future Life on Earth which was published by London University Press in 2022.This book belongs to the genre of narrative nonfiction and analyzes the evolution of the boreal forest’s treeline and its growing edge from the economic,political and ecological perspectives.It also narrates the severe challenges animals and plants in the forest confront under the background of climate warming.The book is divided into seven chapters,each of which introduces a different type of boreal forest.The first chapter describes the Scottish Pine.In narrative nonfiction,the fictional writing techniques will be used to depict real events.There are vivid scenery descriptions,thought-provoking persuasive contents,as well as ecological and biological terminologies in the source text.Based on these characteristics,this paper adopts Li Changshuan’s“CEA framework” as the theoretical guidance and analyzes challenges and solutions in the process of translating narrative nonfiction according to comprehension,expression and adaptation principles.In comprehension,the translator tackles understanding problems by finding clues from the logic of the context,searching parallel text online and consulting to foreigners in a language forum.In expression,the translator uses translation skills of conversion,division,repetition,reconstruction and amplification to translate long sentences and to make the target text more fluent.Adaptation contains omission and combination as well as explanation to fulfill a concise and readable translated version.Currently,narrative nonfiction has become a hot topic in Chinese publishing industry;however,some of those published translated versions are not qualified and have been criticized by readers.To investigate reasons behind this awkward situation,the translator chooses chapter one of The Treeline: the last forest and future life on earth as the source text and renders it into Chinese by analyzing the source text in depth and employing several translation methods.The translator hopes to provide useful suggestions for those who may translate this type of text in the future.This paper has been completed based on this translation practice and is divided into five sections:translation material introduction,translation process description,theoretical framework,case analysis,and conclusion.Through the translation practice,the translator firstly discovers that translation of narrative nonfiction needs a high level of writing skills,sharp language style and the patience to explore background information of translators.Secondly,comprehension and expression are inextricably linked.Thirdly,paying attention to unconventional meanings of small words and mastering the theme of the source text as well as the author’s attitudes assist the translator to resolve comprehension problems.