A Report On C-E Translation Of Repair Manual Of X Vehicle(Excerpts)

Economic and trade integration has increased the volume of international auto import and export transactions,as well as the demand for auto repair manuals’ translation on the international market.Related auto texts like Repair Manual of Vehicle and others have both practical significance and high social and economic value in the context of adhering to the global development strategy,aiming at the international market to establish Chinese auto brands,increasing the discourse power of Chinese vehicles in the global auto market,and enabling Chinese autos to better go global.This translation practice report is excerpted from the section of maintenance in the original language material Repair Manual of X Vehicle.Given that the source text is featured by accurate and objective language expression,strict logic,conciseness,coherence and standardization.In the translation process,in order to meet the normative characteristics of scientific and technical texts while taking into account the practical needs and aesthetic interests of the audience,the translator adopts the functional equivalence theory put forward by Eugene A.Nida as a theoretical guide and focuses on the processing techniques of vocabulary and sentences at the micro level and chapters at the macro level of the text.By analyzing the transformation in meaning at each level,the realization of purpose in the foreign English translation activities of automobile maintenance manuals is explored.In the report,the translator argues that Nida,inspired by Chomsky’s transformative generative grammar,adopts the principles and methods of linguistic science to study the translation process empirically,ignoring other non-scientific aspects of translation work(e.g.artistry,intuition,etc.),and provides a detailed analysis of word position,sentence and chapter structure and meaning,which offers direct guidance to the translator’s technical translation of the text.At the lexical level,the translator’s extensive research work results in lexical equivalence between the target language and the source text;at the sentence level,the translator rewrites the sentence structure of the original text with reference to an industry-discussed vehicle manual;at the chapter level,the translator addresses the issue of contextualisation in the translation;at the stylistic level,the translator addresses the issue of the audience’s reading experience,with a view to conforming to Nida’s call for a focus on the audience’s perception of the target language.