A Translation Report On Spirit House: Bartender Training Manual(Excerpts)

This paper is a report on my translation of Spirit House: Bartender Training Manual, which includes a number of materials about spirits or alcohol. The little book consists of 15 different parts ranging from bartending to distillation. According to the text classification theory of Peter Newmark, it is an informative text with the features of technicality, objectivity and accuracy. The Manual mainly explains methods of making great drinks and their history, which is practical and useful for people working in bars. So the purpose of the translation is practical too, which is to help bartenders like those in Spirit House, who speak little English, understand the training manual better. The translator first acquainted herself with the characteristics of the text first, and then chose the most appropriate translation strategies while conveying the professional information of the original text.This report is based on the translation of the second to fifth parts of the Manual. There are four parts in the report. In the first part, the translator describes the project in detail, which concludes includes project background, the client‘s requirements, tools used in the translation, preparation before translation and so on. The second part is about the Skopos theory and its three main rules--Skopos rule, coherence rule and fidelity rule. The translator gives a brief introduction to this theory. Then the translator talks about the difficulties she encountered in translation and provides 12 examples to explain how she adopted the Skopos theory and how the three rules regulated her translation. She used the following strategies: amplification, omission, conversion, changing the voice and repositioning the sentences. In the final part, she points out some feasible strategies in alcohol-related translation and lists several problems she has not solved yet. She hopes that this report could enlighten people who translates materials in the relevant field and that the problems which have confused her could be tackled more satisfactorily in the future.