A Report On The Translation Of The International Food Safety Capacity-Building Plan

This report is based on the translation of the International Food Safety Capacity-Building Plan(the Plan)issued by the U.S.Food and Drug Administration(the FDA)in February,2013 under the Food Safety Modernization Act(the FSMA).The Plan's key goals and objectives are: ensure efficiency across the FDA Foods and Veterinary Medicine Program,increase effectiveness through evidence-based decision making,support the exchange of information between FDA and other foreign government agencies and other entities,and enhance technical assistance and capacity-building in food safety.The Plan is a part of the implementation of the FSMA under which the FDA is required to construct an overall program to increase the technical and supervisory food safety capacity of other foreign government agencies or enterprises who export food to the USA.The writing style of this Plan is a mixture of the style of general and legal texts.There are short and concise sentences as well as long and complicated ones.Typical Latin words in legal English are also used in this Plan.Moreover,the translator finds in the Plan lots of agencies' names or terms that are rarely seen in China's legal system or food safety field.All the aforesaid problems require the translator to make corresponding translation strategies when translating different sentences of different writing styles.The translator should also refer to dictionaries and parallel texts to make clear the meanings of unfamiliar terms or expressions.The food safety problem has been critical in China for years.On April 24,2015,the 14 th Session of the 12 th Standing Committee of the National People's Congress promulgated the newly revised Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China,which will greatly improve the food safety situation in China.However,the effective implementation of the law is still a tough task for China,thus it is necessary to learn from developed countries' experiences in food safety field.