A Report On The E-C Translation Of Connecting Sounds:the Social Life Of Music(Excerpts)

Translation is an interlanguage conversion activity that reproduces the information contained in the source text’s sentences and discourse into the form of the target language.Due to the influence of different languages,cultures and mindsets,translation loss cannot be avoided.In the translation process,the translator should be aware of the emergence of translation loss,accurately identify the category of loss,and use certain methods to compensate for it in time.The material selected for this translation practice comes from the book Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music by the sociologist Nick Crossly.This book provides a comprehensive and detailed account of the intersection of music and society,reflecting the value of sociology of music.The translator chooses the second chapter as the source text of this translation exercise,in which the original author argues that music is a form of social interaction and musical work is a reflection of social life.As one of translation strategies,translation compensation enables the target text to be as close as possible to the source text in terms of linguistic structures,pragmatic functions,stylistic features,aesthetic values with the aim of repairing or compensating for the translation loss caused by a combination of subjective and objective factors.Since the source text possesses a high degree of rigor,logic,and professionalism,in the translation process,in order to exactly convey the knowledge of the source text and the original author’s viewpoint,the translator should consciously make translation compensation.This report analyzes and compensates for the loss occurs in the translation process from four levels:lexical,syntactic,cultural,and aesthetic,and adopts different translation methods for different levels.At the lexical level,methods of amplification,generalization,conversion,and shift of part of speech are used to address the lexical disparity between the source and target languages.At the syntactic level,long sentences and passive sentences that appear more frequently in English academic texts are translated through the division and shift of voice.At the cultural level,annotation within the text and annotation outside the text can provide the target readers with the cultural information necessary for understanding the text.At the aesthetic level,it is important to try to preserve the artistic impact and style of the source text.