The Translation Of Chapter One And Chapter Three Of The African American Predicament

This project is a translation of some essays from the African American Predicament (1999) into Chinese, together with a critical commentary. The book is an essay collection edited by Christopher H. Foreman Jr.. The essays are written by the highly respected educational experts in America, discussing the issues such as African American education, the affirmative activity, and the politics.In the current age of global economy, business translation, technology translation and other best-selling literature translation such as the Steve Jobs, are more popular than academic translation. In fact, learning the advanced technology and doing business with foreign countries are of equal importance to getting to know measures of educational equality. The source text is about the African American social and educational situation in the early19th century during which the situation of educational equality of the African American improved dramatically.In translation, some difficulties are encountered in terms of vocabulary and syntax. Many terminologies and culture-loaded words are difficult to translate because of lacking of background information. Due to the different sentence structure of the English and Chinese, long and complex English sentences are hard to translate. However, the problems are settled with the application of Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory and translation strategies such as annotation, semantic extension, decomposition of long sentences, readjustment of Chinese sentences and so on. As a result, the Chinese translation runs smoothly and becomes more readable.The text involves African American social and educational equality. The translated version will somehow conductive to African American studies in China. The measures offered by the educational experts will be of referential value to China’s educational policy making. Furthermore, the suggested translation strategies are also expected to give some enlightenment to other translators who translate such kind of texts.