A Report On The Translation Of Papers On Agricultural Water Management

China is a drought-stricken country.According to the data in 2004,the water resource in China was 2,185 m~3 per capita,which was less than one-third of the world average and ranked 121 in the world.China was one of the 13 countries with the poorest water resources per capita in the world(张伟丽2011).With the increasing population,the scarcity of water resources in China is becoming more and more serious.In the meantime,high water consumption and serious water pollution make water shortage in our country even more serious.Rice is the staple food in China.Growing rice needs more irrigation water and would cause nitrogen loss.Nitrogen is one of the main pollutants to water resources.Therefore,researches and studies are done on water use efficiency and nitrogen loss in rice paddy fields in China.Accordingly,translation of articles in world famous publications related to such researches and studies would provide advanced experience for domestic researchers.“Water Use Efficiency of a Rice Paddy Field in Liaohe Delta,Northeast China”and“Nitrogen loss and Its Risk in Paddy Fields under Different Drainage Management”are two articles dealing with water use efficiency and nitrogen loss,respectively.Based on the thematic progression theory,this translation report explores how the translator accomplishes the translation task,with the analysis of the ST,task preparation,translation method and finding.During the translation process,first of all,the translator analyzes the lexical and syntax features of the ST.Secondly,based on the technical words collected and with the aid of parallel texts,online encyclopaedia,online dictionaries,professional paper dictionaries and English-Chinese dictionaries,a special terminology for this translation task is established.Thirdly,the translator reviews the researches concerning English-Chinese translation of agricultural and scientific articles and concludes that lexical and syntactic features are the main focuses of the previous researches.However,they seldom mention about how to deal with the cohesion of the discourse in the translation process.The difficulties found during the translation process are as follows:obstacles caused by the wide use of abbreviation and technical words,lack of smoothness or logic caused by the neglect of textual cohesion.To deal with the said problems,a terminology is established and the thematic progression theory is used as the guidance in the translation process.Through analyzing the text with the thematic progression theory,the author found that the recognition of the thematic pattern in the discourse is very important,because it guides the translator in choosing proper translation skills to provide more readable translation.Certain translation skill could be used in certain thematic progression.For example,omission is usually used in parallel progression pattern and concentrated progression pattern.