A Translation Project Report On Defying Mental Illness (Chapter One And Chapter Two)

This is a translation project report on an extract from Defying Mental Illness:Finding Recovery with Community Resources and Family Support written by Paul Komarek and Andrea Schroer. This book is a scholarly monograph on mental illness and it mainly deals with the symptoms and therapies of mental illness. In recent years, an increasing number of people are suffering from mental illness for complicated reasons. On the one hand, people are under extreme social pressure; on the other hand, most people neglect the early symptoms of the disease when first diagnosed. Compared with medical treatment, this book prefers to tell patients how to live a better life by fully availing themselves of community resources and relying more on family support. Investigation on readers' response shows that this scholarly monograph has indeed helped many patients and their families better support and collaborate with each other. The first and second chapters of the book focus on features, categories and recoveries of mental illness, especially in a perspective of sociology. Therefore, it's of great significance to translate the two chapters of this book because its Chinese version not only provides great referential value for Chinese psychological doctors but also enlightens and assists patient's families as well as researchers in this field.This translation project report takes Reiss' s text typology as its theoretical basis. According to Reiss, all texts can be classified into three types: informative, expressive and operative. The translation method should be based on the text type and the purpose of translation is to achieve typological equivalence based on text function. This translator classifies Defying Mental Illness:Finding Recovery with Community Resources and Family Support as informative text after text type analysis. Accordingly, in the process of translation, this translator should convey the concept and information of the original text accurately and meanwhile keep the Chinese version as simple and clear as the source. This translator hopes the translation can offer guidance and reference to readers and hopefully proves in practice the importance of equivalence in typology in translation.