A Report On Team Work Of Translating Academic Texts

In the era of globalization, economic, technical, and cultural exchanges among countries are becoming increasingly frequent, bringing translation in a huge demand. Under this trend, collaborative translation has bloomed into a thriving industry. More and more translation tasks are completed by various teams, to meet the demands of customers in time. Meanwhile, with the deepening of international academic exchanges, it is greatly important to translate academic texts. Based on the translation practice, this report attempts to explore how to control the translation quality of academic texts conducted by a team through case study.This paper is a report of a translation project. The source text is the article "A Theory of Cognitive Development" by Kurt W. Fischer, which was published on Psychological Review in1980. In the article, with the help of skill theory, the author attempts to illustrate the psychological transformation of each individual from his birth to adulthood, and focus primarily on aspects of learning and problem solving. The present author, under the guidance of Peter Newmark’s text typology theory and translation strategies, reports the main difficulty in the translation process, namely, how to control the translation quality, mainly about management of academic terms; consistency of translation styles. The present author analyzes the stylistic features of the source text from lexical, syntactical and textual levels, and attempts to put forward solutions to academic terms, long sentence, and textual coherence. And finally, the present author proposes the following five principles for academic translation by a team:First, academic terms need explanation as well as clear translation. Second, long sentence translation should be logic-focused. Thirdly, translation should be coherent in language and culture, and accepted by target readers. Fourthly, words selection should be rigorous, and in line with academic standards. Fifthly, translators should be consistent in terms and translation styles.In the report, the present author summarizes some reflections and proposes some suggestions for further study, expecting to provide later translators with some useful information on collaborative translation and academic translation.