| As a type of practical text, instruction manual plays an important part in economic activities and people’s life. It provides essential information about a certain product as well as explicit instructions for the operation and maintenance. A high-quality translation of an instruction manual can facilitate technology exchanges around the world, and enhance the international competitiveness of domestic products.This report mainly discusses the Chinese-English translation project of Equipment Operation and Maintenance Manual for a road rail tractor. To begin with, a brief description of translation procedures such as project introduction, pre-translating analysis and necessary preparations are made. Then detailed case analyses concerning issues during the translation and the corresponding translation strategies are conducted. Finally, several insufficiencies of this project are pointed out based on the practical experience.Guided by Christiane Nord’s “Function plus Loyalty†theory, the analyses of the translation brief and source text are conducted before the translation begins, so that the overall translation strategies can be determined. During the translation process, four translation approaches are proposed based on the characteristics of the source text and concrete examples. These approaches, namely literal translation of technical terms, conversion of thematic structure, division of long sentences and expression of interpersonal meaning, are adopted, and the Chinese-English translation strategies from linguistic aspect and interpersonal aspect are then discussed.The report indicates that in such technical translation projects, the translators should not only deliver the accurate semantic information of source text, but also take into consideration the communicative intention of the source-language. Therefore proper translation strategies should be adopted according to the text features and the text functions in order to achieve the functional equivalence. The author hopes that this report can be helpful in translation practices of such projects. |
