A Report On The Translation Of Urban System Studies Series By Centre For Liveable Cities Of Singapore

Based on Nida's translation stages,this report classifies translation problems from the translation of Urban System Studies series by three stages--Analysis,Transfer and Restructuring.As the source text(ST)is precise and clear,formal and easily understood for Singaporeans,it is suggested that the TT should be equally precise and accessible.This is achieved through translation strategies for each stage.In the Analysis section,the author looks into translation issues induced by wrong grammatical and semantic analysis,and concludes that a lack of grammatical knowledge can lead to mistranslation and a lack of subtlety in message,while insufficient semantic understanding and background information can also cause failure in understanding meanings.In a word,the analysis section takes care of translation accuracy.In the Transfer section,the author illustrates typical problems on conveying messages to the receptor,and demonstrates solutions in word choice,information focus and information flow,so as to keep the writing clear and comprehensible.The translation strategies suggested in this section include "being familiar with local expressions of target readers","end-weight principle",and "old-new information sequencing".In the Restructuring section,the author focuses on reproducing the style and tries to solve two typical issues in the project:westernized Chinese and colloquial language,so as to ensure language quality required by this type of official articles.Accordingly,the translation strategies include avoiding westernized Chinese structure,noun clusters,colloquial expressions and segmented sentences.The report thus offers a translation strategy framework tailored to this translation project,which will also be useful for translators working on similar tasks.