Report On The Translation Of The First World War-A Very Short Introduction

This report is based on Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 of The First World War-A Very Short Introduction.In Chapter 1,the author of the book introduces the pre-war conditions of European powers from the perspective of politics,economy,ethnic composition and military strength.The major conflicts between the powers and how the rival military alliances-the Allied Powers and the Central Powers-were established are also given in Chapter 1.Chapter 3 mainly introduces the warfare of the initial phase of the World War I,including the introductions to famous battles such as the Battle of Marne and how the warfare on both the Western Front and the Eastern Front came to a stand-off.Under the guidance of Hans Vermeer‘s Skopos theory,the translator first identified his Skopos,namely producing a reader-friendly target text for the target readers who are not familiar with the history of World War I.Then based on his Skopos,he selected proper translation skills in solving the difficulties that he encountered in the process of translation.These difficulties can be categorized into difficulties on background knowledge and linguistic difficulties.The first type of difficulty includes the translation of terms in the fields of military and history as well as adding necessary background knowledge in the target text.The second type of difficulty includes the translation of appositive,parenthesis and attributive clauses,and restoring the logic in the target text at the textual level.The translator solved the difficulties with the translation skills including adding footnotes,amplification and conversion,etc.