A Report On The E-C Translation Of UN Verbatim Records

The United Nations plays a significant role in coordinating international relations,settling worldwide disputes and promoting world peace.The UN Verbatim Reporting Service,which is subordinated to the Meetings&Publishing Division of the UN Department for General Assembly and Conference Management,is responsible for producing and translating verbatim records of the meetings of the General Assembly,the Security Council and the Disarmament Commission in the six official languages of the UN.The author was luckily recommended by her supervisor to participate in the E-C translation of UN verbatim records from March to June,2021,under the guidance of her co-supervisor,a senior translator working for the UN.These verbatim records cover topics concerning African conflicts,Eastern Europe frictions,Middle East disputes,peacekeeping missions,racial equality and climate change,etc.Involving multiple contexts,their translation demand highly for choices and adaptation in language use,laying stress on both accuracy and fluency.Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory,contextual adaptation in particular,is applied to meet the translation requirements of UN verbatim records.The author adopted many translation strategies such as addition,annotation,sentence restructuring,paragraph restructuring,background knowledge compensation and so on in the translation practice.With the help of these translation strategies,the target texts are more consistent and more coherent,embodying the textual features of UN verbatim records,such as the flexibility of language,the uniqueness of style and the diversity of background.This report is based on the translation practice.Under the guidance of Adaptation Theory,case analysis is done from two perspectives,namely,adaptation to linguistic context and adaptation to communicative context.In the translation of UN verbatim records,adaptation to linguistic context is of great importance in language expression,contextual cohesion and textual style of the target texts;while adaptation to communicative context is also important in the translation practice for physical world adaptation,mental world adaptation as well as social world adaptation.This report aims to provide a new perspective for the research on the translation of UN verbatim records and some enlightenment on future translation of similar texts.