A Translation Practice Report On What’s New In Artificial Lift?

Petroleum technical text, as a branch of sci-tech text, is widely used in economic life. The text provides various professional information for practitioners in petroleum industry. With the increasingly deepening of China’s reform and opening up, the global connection in petroleum industry is becoming closer and closer. Petroleum technical text serves as an important learning material for personnel in petroleum industry and the relevant translation activity is undoubtedly of great significance. For quite a long time, the domestic and foreign translation theories are mainly for literary translation. Due to the huge difference between literary translation and sci-tech translation, theories of the previous one can’t directly applied to that of the later one. To explore the relevant translation methods, the author, based on the translation of What’s New in Artificial Lift?, has done some preliminary study on petroleum technical text. In addition, the important and difficult points as well as the corresponding translation strategies have also been summarized and induced.This thesis consists of two parts. The first part is a15000-word translation practice. The source text selected is an English article named What’s New in Artificial Lift? published in World Oil. The technologies in artificial lift have been introduced in this article. The second part is a report on the translation practice, which is divided into four chapters. The first chapter introduces the background, theories, objectives and the significance of the translation practice. The second chapter explores the content, linguistic features and structural characteristics of the source text. The third chapter summarizes the important and difficult points as well as the corresponding strategies applied encountered during translation, with emphasis on translation of terminology, passive voice and chart. The translation is based on Newmark’s communicative translation theory and translation strategies chosen are literal translation, free translation and transliteration. The fourth chapter summarizes the experiences and lessons gained and some problems unresolved during translation.Through the translation practice, the author mastered linguistic features and translation strategies of the petroleum technical text, which lays a foundation for future translation activities. It’s expected that the target text can provide valuable information for petroleum industry practitioners, and the translation report can also offer some references to personnel specializing in petroleum technical translation.