Translation Report Of Out Of America-a Black Man Confronts Africa(excerpt)

Keith Richburg’s Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa is the record of his journey in Africa. It tells his motive, experience and feelings of his three and a half years as a journalist in Africa. When he was young, he went through the Detroit riot and the change of the city, usually falling into the dilemma between his soul brothers and white friends, not knowing exactly what it means. After being a journalist for long, he had the motive to go to Africa, to uncover the mystery of where his root is. In Africa, he encountered chaos and slaughters everywhere. Thus he had a chance to reconsider his ways of seeing the racial issues in America, his homeland. After long depression in the continent, he finally retreated from Africa, thanking God that he is an American.This book is a reminder to the black people, that not all racial problems are the guilt of the whites. Only by mutual self-examination of the whites and the colored people can the society progress in a smooth way. It is worth translation, as it is a good breakpoint of a new horizon to Chinese people who may, not knowing all the aspects of the issue, harbor prejudices.The translation report has five parts. The first part is the introduction of the task and the source text; the second part is about the preparation before setting out to do the translation, and potential problems found during the preparation; the third part is about the theory and strategies that are used in general for the translation, especially my consideration of relevance theory; the fourth part is the case study, discussing some of the details in the translation; the last part is the summary of what is gained from the translation.The translation task makes up a significant part of my study for master’s degree, and contributes a lot to my future translations. I’ve gained a lot not only about the translation methods but also about the translation theories which I now have a much better understanding about.