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

Since China’s entry into the WTO, the language service industry in China has enjoyed a rocketing growth. The language service industry has reached out to all walks of life. An integral part of the language service industry, the translation industry has witnessed sustained development. While translation studies covers more and more fields, ranging from literary translation to non-literary translation, the translation industry as a whole is specialized and standardized. Translation studies as an independent discipline has been established and is being built up. Military translation, though it boasts a long history, has been rarely studied. To date, there are few translation theories and strategies related to military translation. Yet, military translation plays an indispensable role in the development of national security strategy in that it promotes national soft power and inter-country communications. Therefore, military translation deserves keen attention.The author of this paper selects an American military document and tries to translate some excerpts into English with the purpose to understand the language characteristics of English military texts and summarize the author’s opinions about English-Chinese military translation strategies.There are two parts in this report.The first part is to translate a part of the source text with the help of CAT tools,like SDL Trados 2014,and the analysis of three kinds of parallel texts,that is,Department of Defense Strategic Plan for Language Skills,Regional Expertise,and Cultural Capabilities,《当代世界军事与中国国防》(World Military Affairs and China’s National Defense in the Contemporary Era),《战略情报:为美国世界政策服务》(Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy);the second part focuses on the problems that I met during the translation process,the solutions to them and the corresponding translation strategies.Through this project, on the one hand, I hope to improve my translation skills, learn more about the features of military texts and gain a deeper insight into non-literary translation. On the other hand, I wish to introduce advanced foreign military strategies and promote military exchanges between China and the rest of the world.