A Report On The E-C Translation Practice Of How The Word Is Passed:A Reckoning With The History Of Slavery Across Amercia(Excerpt From Chapter 2)

This translation practice report is based on the translation of part of a book written by black writer Clint Smith,How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America(excerpt from Chapter 2,“An open book,up under the sky”: The Whitney Plantation).The book was published in 2021 by Little,Brown and Company.The translator has selected the first half of the second chapter as the translation text.In this chapter,the author explored the site of Whitney Plantation and the Whitney Museum.From the perspective of a descendant of enslaved Black people,the author tells the dark story of the plantation under the institution of slavery.The author vividly describes what they saw during their visit and expresses their stance and thoughts through dialogues and monologues.During the translation process,several challenges were encountered:accurately translating specific scene descriptions,retracing relevant historical facts,reproducing the style of dialogue in the source text,and expressing the coherence of discourse logic.For specific scene descriptions,compensation and sequential translation methods were used to allow the target language readers to experience the scene.Given the large number of historical events,the method of connecting context and verifying historical facts was used.As for the dialogue descriptions,which appeared several times in the text,a combination of literal translation and free translation was adopted to reproduce the effect of the source text.In terms of discourse logic,the methods of parallelism and adjusting coherence were applied.Since the text serves the functions of expression,information,and invocation,it is a complex text.Therefore,the translator used a combination of communicative translation and semantic translation to guide this practice.Through this translation practice,the translator realized the importance of considering historical and cultural factors when translating historical texts,as well as the significance of pre-translation preparation and post-translation proofreading.It is hoped that this translated text can provide further reference information for readers interested in the history of slavery in the United States.Furthermore,the translator has come to a profound understanding that there is still much room for improvement in her bilingual abilities and translation skills.