A Report On The Translation Of 1177 B.C.:The Year Civilization Collapsed(Chapter 5)

The source-text of the translation report is excerpted from the fifth chapter of1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed which was authored by Eric H.Klein and published in 2014.This translation report is guided by the functional equivalence theory of Eugene Nida,which pursues the impact of translation on readers and emphasizes that the response of target readers to the version should be basically the same as the response of source-text readers to the original.In the process of translation,the translator looks at the deeper connotation of the source-text and grasps its main purpose.When equivalence in content is achieved,the translator also tries to achieve equivalence in form as much as possible.When equivalence in content and equivalence in form cannot be combined at the same time,the translator gives priority to equivalence in content.According to Nida,the translator tries to use the most appropriate,natural,and equivalent language to reproduce the original information,from semantics to style and from surface vocabulary information to deep cultural information.1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed is a book that belongs to the category of archeology so the book involves a great number of names of people,geographical names and country names.In order to be faithful to the original,the translator mainly uses transliteration and annotation to deal with these problems after searching for the data.Transliteration helps to preserve the unique features of names of people,places and countries;annotation supplement the unfamiliar content for the target readers and helps target readers to better understand the information of the source text.According to Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory,after analyzing the differences in sentence structure,language expression,voice and logical thinking between English and Chinese languages,the translator mainly uses the translation methods of literal translation,free translation,addition,division and annotation,and then analyzes each skill with specific examples.The translator strives to be faithful tothe original text and to present natural and smooth versions in a language that conforms to the Chinese thinking and expression habits.The translator summarizes the experience and lessons learned from the entire process of translation,and realizes the importance of preparatory,reading up,proofreading,and language foundations for translation.Then,the translator makes a summary and reflection on the issues still to be solved in the translation process.