A Report On C-E Translation Of Documents For Pakistan Railways' ML-1 Project

In Recent years,in response to the Going Global strategy of China,a great number of Chinese railway enterprises have endeavored to explore the overseas business and seek ways of promoting Chinese railway technology going global.China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is the demonstration project of the Belt and Road initiative and the upgrading project of Pakistan Railways' existing mainline(ML-1)and establishment of Havelian dry port is the priority project in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor construction.In the process of major overseas railway engineering projects,the translation of technical documents is regarded as a vital link for the technical communication and project progressing.As a member of the site translation team,the author has participated in the translating practice of many technical texts with a whole duration of 13 months and gained some experience in the translating of railway technical texts.This report is based on the C-E translation of railway technical texts for the upgradation project of Pakistan Railways' mainline-1(ML-1).By taking several typical railway technical texts such as interim reports of design schemes,term of reference for preliminary design,and technical appendix of bidding documents(about 17,000 Chinese characters in total)produced in the railway upgradation project as the objects of analysis,this report makes exploration on the C-E translation of railway technical texts.According to Translation Action Theory,translation is a kind of purpose-driven,and effect-oriented communicative action and translational action from source text and as a communicative process involving a series of roles and players.Each player has his or her function and goal in the translation action and the translator is supposed to produce a TT that is functionally communicative for the receiver.In combination of this theory,the author analyzes the difficulties encountered during the translating task and the reasons and comes up with corresponding solutions.In this report,firstly,the author introduces the background of railway engineering project,the requirements and significance of the translating task.Then,she briefs the whole process of this task,including the preparation of translation,translation process and quality control of translated texts.After that,she sorts out the difficulties in the translating of technical terms,long and complicated sentences,zero-subject sentences and Chinese volitive auxiliaries by making detailed analysis with examples on such difficulties based on Translation Action Theory proposed by Justa Holz Manttari,a German functional translation theorist and then correspondingly comes up with the solutions.At last,she makes some reflections on the translating task and gives some suggestions for the improvement of Chinese-English translating of railway technical texts.The suggestions are as follows: strengthening the using of translation aided tools,basically mastering other assistive software,comprehensively learning and properly selecting and applying translation theories to guide the translation practice.