A Report On The Translation Of Chapter9of The Language Instinct:"Baby Born Talking----Describes Heaven"

This is a project report on the English-Chinese translation of Chapter9of The Language Instinct:"Baby Born Talking----Describes Heaven", which was written by Steven Pinker. Following a brief introduction to the background of the translation project, a brief discussion of the significance of the project, and an analysis of the original text, this thesis presents in-depth analyses of various translation techniques which this author uses to translate sentences that are either lexically or syntactically difficult. Lexical translation techniques such as amplification and conversion as well as syntactic translation techniques like word-order alteration and clause-separation are discussed in detail with examples from this author’s translation. Meanwhile, this author conducts a comparative study of her own translation and the Taiwan writer Daisy L. Hung’s translation, thereby putting forward some suggestions for the correction of Daisy L. Hung’s errors. By studying the problems encountered during the translation, this thesis concludes that professional translators must not only pay close attention to the information contained in the source text, and the different modes of logical thinking between native English and Chinese writers/readers, but also read extensively, far beyond the confines of the disciplines of language and translation, and keep on enhancing their sense of Chinese and English with a view to accumulating more knowledge, embracing findings from other fields of study, and performing better serves as a translator.