A Report On The Translation Of Basics Of Translation Studies(Chapter 7-9)

This English-Chinese translation task is based on an excerpt of Chapter 7 to 9 from Cay Dollerup’s Basics of Translation Studies. This book is an academic work, and a primer of translation studies. It discusses several major issues in the field of translation, for instance, the nature of translation, the features of different translation modes, analyses the challenges that translators confront with in translation practice and profoundly rethinks today’s translation studies from the perspective of practice. These three chapters of the book that the author translates mainly focus on problems and solutions which have been dealt with most often in the discussion of translation. Chapter 7, “Translation Approaches”, discusses different translation strategies of various text types, and concentrates mostly on the dichotomy of “free” vs. “literal” translation. Chapter 8, “Translation and Translators’ Tools”, focuses on how should translators use translation tools in specific translation assignments. Chapter 9, “The Translator in Society”, mainly discusses how various factors affect translators with different backgrounds in a given society.Before translating, the author reads the source text carefully, so as to learn its main content, language style and writing background. Then, the author employs the Internet, dictionaries, and parallel texts to search for terminologies and background information of the source text. While translating, in the light of Skopos theory, which is the core of German functionalism, the author tries hard to make the translation idiomatic in order to put the Chinese readers’ needs in the first place. In addition, different translation methods are adopted to deal with problems such as the translation of terminologies and complicated sentences, including literal translation, free translation, amplification, omission, sequential translation, reverse translation and other translation methods. Through this translation practice, the author obtains a deeper understanding about translation studies and further improves the translation ability.