A Report On Translating Building Language Skills And Cultural Competencies In The Military (Excerpts)

The material of this report is Building Language Skills and CulturalCompetencies in the Military, published by the US House of Representatives,Committee on Armed Services and Subcommittee on Oversight&Investigation. Itscontent includes the status quo of the US army’s language skills, regional expertiseand cultural awareness, government strategies and relevant documents, the Service’sefforts, as well as the army’s larger challenges in the future, etc. Through translatingthe first three chapters of its core part, the author of this thesis learns about somecharacteristics of military texts which are represented by precision in word using,being formal in expressions, and being concise in language forms, etc. Meanwhile, theauthor realizes that the translator should have a certain level of military backgroundknowledge and cultural knowledge to complete the translation practice well, whichhas been the biggest problem in this translation practice. In addition, the layout of theoriginal text as well as some professional charts in it asks for not only the professionaltranslation ability, but also certain file processing techniques. All these difficultiesneed to be analyzed and solved by much study before and during the translation.There are two parts in this report. The first part is to translate a part of the sourcetext (ST) with the help of CAT tools, like SDL Trados2011, and the analysis of threekinds of parallel texts, that is, Department of Defense Strategic Plan for LanguageSkills, Regional Expertise, and Cultural Capabilities, National Soft Power (《国家软实力》), Preemption and the American Way of War 《(先发制人与美国的战争方式》).In this process, as the author considers the faithfulness as the fundamental in militarytranslation, she should seriously collect, consult, know, even learn backgroundinformation which is related to the original text as much as possible at thepre-translation stage, to fully understand the related military terminologies, militaryevents, military agencies, and locations, etc. for the accurate translation; the secondpart focuses on problems in translation process, and their solutions as well as translation strategies. During the translation of this military text, the author followsthe criteria of “faithfulness, expressiveness and appropriateness”, endeavoring toloyally express the thoughts and the essence of the ST and maintain its distinctmilitary characteristics. Furthermore, the author weighs the choice of words over andover again to ensure the translation is concise and lucid, with the flavor of militaryterms, which attempts to make the translation more appealing and appropriate.Through this translation project, on one hand, the author hopes to improve thetranslation skills, and learn more about military text features and non-literarytranslation strategies; on the other hand, the author wishes to introduce some excellentforeign military strategies and make a little contribution to the military exchanges athome and aboard.