Project Translator Report Of Accreditation Scheme For Museums And Galleries In The United Kingdom

As a complicated intercultural activity, translation aroused the public’s interest long before and remains one focus of linguistic study. Since it involves plenty of aspects and factors, the establishment and development of translation study should resort to the guidance and enlightenment of theories within other disciplines.Verschueren, the secretary-general of International Pragmatics Association, elaborated on Adaptation Theory in his Understanding Pragmatics, which held that language use is a continuous making of choices with different degrees of salience for the purpose of adaptation (Verschueren2000) and provided an innovative horizon for translation study. Adaptation Theory is treated by the academic circle as a coherent unified framework not only for the Pragmatics but also for the translation study.The dynamics of the language choice determines that translation as an intercultural communication should rely on various contexts in a large part, and assume corresponding tactics and techniques according to the changes in contexts, and specific objects and targets in these contexts. The contexts under the research category of Adaptation Theory can be divided into linguistic context and communicative context, including influencing factors from linguistic to extra-linguistic ones. To study these two kinds of contexts intensively will prove to be of great value in boosting the translation pertinence and quality. Context Adaptation Theory, for this reason, has bright prospect in translation practice as well as in theoretical study.The author participated in a translation internship at Hunan Provincial Museum for nearly two months and was commissioned the translation project Accreditation Scheme for Museums and Galleries in the United Kingdom. This thesis is the summary of the experience gained from the project translation. In regard to the actual translation, preparation works as a prerequisite, which covers translation planning, consultation of relevant materials, and the utilization of network recourses, so on and so forth. Since the source text of this project concerns schemes of museums and galleries in the United Kingdom, text analysis and the understanding of its features will be a multiplier to the translation activity. The author researched from linguistic features and cultural and functional features respectively, and proposed corresponding problems existed in the two aspects. The mainbody of the thesis is the application of the Context Adaptation to solve those problems and meliorate the translation quality, moreover, techniques for improvement have been put forward from two angles of Linguistic Adaptation and Communicative Adaptation. As has been verified by the practice, the author holds that Context Adaptation Theory can dramatically impel translators to give sufficient consideration to influencing factors in different contexts and make adaptation and improvement based on definite context features, which will commendably instruct translation activity.This thesis conducts conclusion and evaluation of the author’s translation practice in the project translation and meanwhile explores the Context Adaptation Theory at a deeper level, in the hope of contributing to the application of Context Adaptation Theory and throwing enlightenment into future translation study and practice.