A Report On E-C Translation Of From Pugwash To Putin:A Critical History Of US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation (Excerpts)

The source text for this translation report is From Pugwash to Putin: A Critical History of US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation,which proposes a practical problemsolving process and investigates the countermeasures.The book From Pugwash to Putin is written by Gerson Sher,who is a former government official witnessing drastic changes in the international environment.It elaborates on the course of scientific cooperation between the US and the Soviets a century ago.In the book,the abundant interview from the crucial participant and faithful records of historical events add to its objectivity,making it informative and enlightening.His magnum opus will provide a new angle to analyze complex international relations.In order to attain the same communicative effect as the source text in the target text as well as retain the information of the ST to the full extent,Newmark’s communicative translation theory is applied to offer this thesis solid theoretical support.The theory proposes that the effect of the source text should be reproduced to yield a fluent and idiomatic translation.It gives priority to the target readers’ experience,thus free from the fixed structure of the ST.The translator attempts to apply the theory to the investigation of efficient translation strategies in order to address practical issues in the translation of historical materials.Based on the translation of Chapter 1 to Chapter of 4 From Pugwash to Putin: A Critical History of US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation,this report analyzes specific cases at three levels to illuminate the positive effect that the communicative translation theory exerts during the translation process.In the analysis at lexical level,the translator uses conversion,substitution,annotation and addition to provide a more natural translation.In the analysis at syntactic level,the translator adopts division and inversion to restructure the long sentence from the source text,making the target text readable.In the analysis at discourse level,the translator mainly focuses on its cohesion and coherence,clarifying logical relationships and ensuring consistency within a certain discourse.This paper demonstrates that the communicative translation theory is useful for translating historical texts,and the translation approaches outlined while dealing with real obstacles are expected to serve as a reference for future research.