A Report On The Translation Of History Of The World Map By Map(Excerpts)

This paper is an English-to-Chinese translation report.The source material is selected from chapter 2 of History of the World Map by Map published by DK,a world well-known publishing house.The book vividly introduces the history of world from prehistory to modern time via 140 maps,relevant archaeological discoveries and informative texts.Through the translation practice,the author hopes to improve translation skill,and provide reference for historical study and translation of similar texts.This report mainly centers on four aspects concerning translation practice,namely,background information,vocabulary,syntax and discourse.Given that the source material can be categorized as an informative text,a lot of preparations were made at the pretranslation stage,including collecting background information and parallel texts by all means,and building a term database,in order to be familiar with the source text.On the lexical level,despite plain language,the source text contains flexible usage of words and lots of historical terms.The difficulties of translation on the syntax level lie in the comprehension and analysis of long sentences which contain many dashes or appear as subordinate clauses and passive sentences.Therefore,under the guidance of Nord’s“Function plus Loyalty”,the author adopted concrete methods based on instrumental translation,such as addition,restructuring,passive-active conversion,and diversion to faithfully convey the original meaning so that the translation conforms to Chinese expression with conciseness and accessibility.In addition,the author repeatedly examined and revised the translation to avoid translationese and errors.Through the translation practice,the author has a better command of Nord’s Function plus Loyalty and finds the significance of text genre in terms of target text style.And it is necessary for translators to fully understand the original text first,and then the corresponding translation methods should be adopted in combination with various factors to ensure that the target text can be fully acceptable by the audience.