A Report On The Translation Of Chinese Construction Scheme Into English

This paper is a translation report on the translation of a Chinese hydrant network construction scheme into English. The scheme STAHL Outdoor and Indoor Fire Hydrant Network Construction Scheme is one of the author's translation tasks in her intern in Engineering and Technical Translation Agency of Jiangsu Province. The client is a rapidly developed medium-sized construction company that is actively seeking for international market. With the purpose of paving the road for branching out into the international market, this company attaches great importance to the hydrant network reconstruction project for Stahl (Suzhou), a foreign business. The quality of the translation of this construction scheme was highly valued too. The client has communicated and expressed the construction company's expectations of this translation for several times. And it is required that the translation shall on the one hand support the communication between the construction company and Stahl, and on the other hand serve the purpose of keeping in archives.Totally there are about ten thousand Chinese characters in this scheme with twelve diagrams and three pictures showing the specific construction methods and the relationships between different materials. The construction scheme mainly presents the reconstruction methods and processes, and precautions for the indoor and outdoor hydrant network reconstruction project of Stahl (Suzhou). It is complete in introducing the compiling basis, construction methods, goals, quality and safety insurance systems and main organization structures, and the specific placement, storage and acceptance methods for pipes and pipe settings and construction plans for several minor projects are presented as key parts of the scheme. The scheme is very logical with standard and clear expressions and great quantities of terminologies, imperative and subjectless sentences.This thesis is composed of five parts. The author mainly discussed several key and difficult points she encountered in translation from the perspective of textual analysis and put forward corresponding solutions. The first part is a task description, which is a brief introduction to the translation project regarding the source and content of the source text and an introduction to the whole translation process. The second part is an introduction to the translation preparations, which includes the textual analysis of the source text, a collection of the network resources, reference books and parallel texts. Related studies including a review on Chinese and Engineering texts and engineering translations were also carried out in the preparation stage. The third part is the case study, which mainly discusses the translation of terminologies, long sentences, imperative and subjectless sentences. The fourth part is the self-checking after the translation, in which several critical improvements were presented after editing, proofreading and the client's evaluation. The last part is a summary of the translation project as well as a summary of what the translator has learnt from this translation task.It is concluded that this report mainly reports what the translator has encountered in translation regarding the understanding and translation of several terminologies and sentences based on a careful textual analysis of the source text and a wide reading of parallel texts. Methods of consulting parallel texts and Internet resources and consulting dictionaries and professional engineering books for double-checks are adopted in the translations of terminologies. Modal verbs and negative words are used to translate imperative sentences under certain circumstances. Imperative sentences, passive sentences and methods of adding a subject and using dummy subjects are adopted in the translation of subjectless sentences.It is suggested that in translation, the translator shall not only make a good preparation for background information and textural analysis, but also have a sound understanding of the source text. After a careful analysis of the key and difficult points of the source text and based on the logic differences between Chinese and English, corresponding translation strategies might be found to better convey the original meaning of the source text.