An English-Chinese Translation Report Of The Nature Of Design (Chapter Two)

This is a report on the English-Chinese translation,whose source text is derived from the Chapter Two of the book The Nature of Design by David.W.Orr,who advances the idea in this book that the nature of design is about how we produce all the things,and how we deal with waste.The author describes the problems and obstacles faced in ecological design in Chapter Two.The language features in the source text are prominent: concise language,rigorous writing,accurate and objective words;There are a lot of complex sentences and long difficult sentences that are well structured and some metaphorical and simile sentences with very expressive language.According to Katharina Reiss’ Text Typology,the source text,which contains a large number of examples and problems used to propose the relationship between the elements,such as,time,information,speed,technology and our daily lives belongs to the type of informative text.In view of the language features of the source text and specific aims of translation,the translator uses the Skopos Theory of Hans Vermeer to guide this translation practice,and mainly adopts word conversion,repetition and free translation at the lexical level to translate the difficult words,division,inversion and voice changes at the syntactic level to deal with the long and complicated sentences,and omission,reference and annotation at the textual level to realize the coherence in target text through the adjustment of cohesive devices,so as to achieve the purpose of communication,coherence rule and fidelity rule.Informative texts are both rich and diverse.Even if there are lots of translation methods widely used for the translation of informative text,the nine translation methods,which are summarized in this translation report have their own value.The translator hopes that this translation practice can make contributions to the translation research of information-based text and provide a reference for the translation of the similar genres.