A Report On The Translation Of Reshaping Agriculture For Nutrition And Health(Excerpts)

Agriculture plays a vital role in China.China's agriculture has developed since about twelve thousand years.The development of China's agriculture can be divided into three stages.The first stage is primitive agriculture,the main form of which is slash-and-burn cultivation,damaging forests and environment.The second stage is traditional agriculture.Although a variety of valuable productive experiences are accumulated in the development of China's traditional agriculture such as using farmyard manure,the technologies of crop rotation and interplantation to realize the sustainable use of land,traditional agriculture in China focuses on solving the problem of food shortage merely.Nowadays,China's agriculture develops into the third stage,modern agriculture.With the social progress and population growth,China's agriculture develops more scientific-oriented than before,emphasizing more on ecological agriculture development.Besides,with growing health problems,Chinese people pay more attention to “nutrition” and “health”.Therefore,it is necessary to introduce more advanced professional knowledge about agriculture and nutrition from western countries in China.Thus,the author inclines to translate some materials related to the field of nutrition and agriculture.The materials of this translation report is an excerpt from the academic monograph entitled Reshaping Agriculture for Nutrition and Health,which is a compilation of papers and briefs commissioned by International Food Policy Research Institute(IFPRI)for the international conference “Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health,” which was held in New Delhi in February 2011.This academic book is “intended to identify knowledge gaps,foster new thinking,and stimulate concrete actions on leveraging agriculture for improving nutrition and health.It is meant to serve a variety of audiences from scholars,academics,students and researchers to practitioners working in this field,to decision makers devising policies that successfully connect agriculture,nutrition,and health at the local,regional,and global levels.” Thus,this academic work is important for the popularization of professional agricultural knowledge.According to the academic book Approaches to Translation written by Peter Newmark,there are three kinds of texts,including informative text,expressive text and vocative text.It is obvious that agricultural text belongs to informative text,which belongs to technical text and whose main function is to introduce the professional agricultural knowledge briefly,clearly and correctly.Thus,the translation of English for agriculture is attached to the translation of EST(English for Science and Technology).The translation of agricultural text lays more emphasis on meaning instead of total correspondence between ST(Source Text)and TT(Target Text),which is corresponding to “Semantic equivalence is more important than formal correspondence.”(Catford 1965),the core content of the theory of Catford's Translation Shifts.Therefore,Catford's Translation Shifts is adoptable for the translation of agricultural texts.The translation report is divided into five parts: task description,task preparation,translation process,task assessment and conclusion.Under the guidance of Catford's Translation Shifts,the author translates ST by adapting the translation strategies of level shifts and category shifts.Then,the author makes a summary and discusses the practicability of applying Catford's Translation Shifts to the translation of agricultural text.