Problems Encountered By Beginners Of The UN Document Translation And Coping Strategies

Based on a case study of the UN documents the author translated in the internship program held by the Chinese Translation Service of the United Nations in New York in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation of Shanghai International Studies University,this thesis deals with problems commonly encountered by beginners of the UN document translation.These translation problems include lack of background knowledge,misuse of UNTERM,and being unaccustomed to the linguistic style of UN documents.Specifically,UN documents have formed a vast body of knowledge and are closely related to each other.Translators lacking background knowledge tend to misunderstand the original text;Inexperienced translators also often misuse UNTERM as a tool to understand the original text;UN documents have a unique linguistic style,so translators cannot get accustomed to it easily in the beginning and may try to copy the structure of the original text to retain this linguistic style in translations.The thesis mainly uses literature research and case studies by drawing on existing research findings and analyzing and comparing first and revised versions of translations,to conclude how beginners of the UN document translation can solve the problems and improve their translation quality.Translators should make greater use of background knowledge to understand documents.Relying on the context alone may not be very effective and sometimes will lead to a misunderstanding of the original text.Secondly,the function of UNTERM is to unify the translation of a word,instead of helping translators to understand the original text.Therefore,translators should use UNTERM after understanding the original text to avoid being "led by the nose" by UNTERM.Finally,faithfulness to the original style does not mean copying the original structure,translators should dare to appropriately get rid of the structure of the original text.