A Report On The E-C Translation Of A Concise Survey Of Western Civilization (Chapter 7)

This English-Chinese practice report is based on the E-C translation of Chapter 7 of A Concise Survey of Western Civilization: Supremacies and Diversities throughout History by American historian Brian A.Pavlac.The translation is guided by Newmark’s communicative and semantic translation theory.The report is divided into five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction to the task and the source text’ features of having objective language,culture-loaded words and strict logic.Chapter Two is preparations,translating and proofreading process.Chapter Three introduces that communicative translation aims to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original,and semantic translation respects the source text’s culture and linguistic form.The theory’s application in the translation project is also elaborated in Chapter Three.Chapter Four analyzes the problems encountered in translation and translation methods at the lexical,syntactic,and textual levels.At the lexical level,the methods of annotation,addition,and change of parts of speech are used;at the syntactic level,division and restructuring,change of voices,and respect for source text’s linguistic form are used;at the textual level,the logic of the source text is presented by reference for demonstrative pronouns and cohesion by conjunction to ensure the fluency and accuracy of the translation from the readers’ perspective to achieve the purpose of communication.Chapter Five concludes with gains and limitations.Through this translation task and the case study,the translator concludes that the theory of communicative and semantic translation can be used to guide the translation of historical texts,and the reserve of historical expertise and language skills are crucial for translation.