A Report On The Transiation Of The Economist (Excerpt)

As one of the world’s most influential political and commercial journals, The Economist keeps a sharp and humorous writing style. It is faithful to the reality by using accurate description and plain narrative. With distinctive standpoints, in-depth analysis and unique perspective, the journal is not only one of the best medias for the public to learn the world but also good material for improving translation ability. Therefore, aiming at studying the features and improving the level of news translation, the author selected The Economist (the4th issue on March23rd,2013) as the source text of translation practice, set up translation group of7people and completed the translation program within the stipulated time. During the process of the program, the author finds that the political news texts are more complex with professional terms, wide range of knowledge and obscure language, which add more difficulties to the translation work. Therefore, the author takes the political news texts in The Economist as a study case and sums up the translation strategies.In the report, after the introduction to The Economist, the author then analyzes the writing style and language features of the texts and lists the arrangement of staff and the translation procedure as well. Through case analysis, the author points out several difficulties encountered in the process of translation: professional vocabularies and terms, long and complicated sentences, lacking of background knowledge and weak Chinese expression. Finally, the author puts forward corresponding methods and techniques such as taking names instead of pronouns, using four-word phrases, selecting the contextual meanings, adjusting the words’ order and reorganizing the sentences, breaking long sentences and merging short sentences, and adding logical connectives. The words of this translation practice are limited, but the author’s theoretical attainment and ability are improved.