A Translation Report On Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin January-March 2012 (Excerpts)

Although peace and development remain the main theme of the present times,localized tension still exists.To preserve the world peace,China needs to make great efforts in enhancing its military power.For China,no matter to keep up with the advanced military technology of the world and“know yourself and your enemy”,or to improve its culture soft power,translation serves as a critical bridge.Therefore,the author of this paper selects an American professional bulletin as source text,and translates six articles in it,the authors of which are commanders,major general,and consultants of Department of Defense of the United States.A majority of the articles are from CFLAs discussing such topics as cultural relativism,ethnography and culture training.Two articles discuss patron-client relations and possible applications in Afghanistan.Another article discusses the stand up of AFRICOM from an African perspective.This report can be divided into two parts.In the first part,the report is discussing how to translate the source text with the help of CAT tools,like SDL Trados 2014,and how these three kinds of parallel texts help the author in translation,that is,Department of Defense Strategic Plan for Language Skills,Regional Expertise,and Cultural Capabilities,?????????????(World Military Affairs and China's National Defense in the Contemporary Era),????????:???????????(Essential Ethnographic Methods:Observations,Interviews,and Questionnaire);in the second part,the report focuses on how to guess the complete form of the military abbreviations.There are mainly three ways of word-formation of abbreviations,that is,acronym,blending and clipping,which is also applicable to military abbreviations.Furthermore,the formation of English military abbreviations is more complex and diverse.Therefore,the author adopt three steps in guessing the complete forms of English military abbreviations:firstly to infer whether thecomplete term is in the form of single word,phrase or sentence according to context and basic grammatical rules,secondly to guess the complete form according to the word-formation rules of English military abbreviations,and finally to put every possible result back to the text.Through this project,on the one hand,the author hopes to grasp the features of bulletins and military texts and learn to apply military translation strategies in solving the confronting difficulties in the translation process.On the other hand,the author wishes to introduce advanced foreign military text which will offer edification and experience for China's military school reform,and offer some insights of the stand up of international affairs from America perspectives.