An E-C Translation Report On Sundaland-Tracing The Cradle Of Civilizations (Chapter Three)

The original text of this translation report derives from Chapter three of Sundaland-Tracing The Cradle Of Civilizations.It mainly introduces the expansion of the Austronesian,leaving lots of traces and influences in Africa,America and Asia.The author of the book is a hydro engineer.Besides his professional work,he also specializes in the history of nations and civilizations,and some viewpoints of prehistory and ancient civilizations are quite popular.This translation report will introduce significance and reasons of the selected topic,the author and contents of the translated text,analyze the difficulties encountered by the translator in the process of translation and clarify which translation methods are adopted to solve the difficulties.Translation difficulties are presented at two levels,namely,lexical level and syntactic level.The difficulties and translation methods at the lexical level are as follows:(1)transliteration and literal translation with annotation of boats' names;(2)literal translation with footnotes of obscure genetic terms;(3)the methods of amplification,omission,and conversion of parts of speech of prepositions.By virtue of these translation methods,difficulties at lexical level are basically dealt.At the syntactic level,the translator analyzes the translation of complex sentences and compoundcomplex sentences.Translation of these sentences usually requires a combination of a variety of translation methods to achieve the desired translation effect,involving inversion,division and integrated approach.Through this translation practice,the translator summarizes the experience and limitations,hoping to provide some references and help for translators of similar texts.Furthermore,translation ability is required to be further improved.It is necessary for the translator to enrich knowledge reserve and improve writing ability.