An E-C Translation And Report On The Wright Brothers (Chapters 1-4)

This is a report of an English-Chinese translation practice. The translator chooses Chapters 1-4 of The Wright Brothers, a non-fictional biography by American writer David McCullough, as the source text. The report takes semantic translation and communicative translation by Peter Newmark as the theoretical guidance. According to semantic translation, the translator tries to render the exact contextual meaning of the source text in accordance with the syntactic structure of the target language; motivated by communicative translation, the translator pursues the same effect to the readers as that to the readers of the source text. Both semantic translation and communicative translation have their own advantages. Hence in the translation project, the translator combines the two strategies to guide the translation practice.The report provides, in the first place, the background information, objectives and significance of the translation project. Then, it introduces the author, the content as well as the language feature of the source text. The report focuses on the application of semantic translation and communicative translation to the translation process accompanied by four translation methods, conversion, restructuring, shifting of voice and annotation. Finally, the report summarizes the translation experience and discusses the problems to be solved.