Practice Report On Multimedia Courseware Translation For Lectures On "Study Class For University Presidents Of French-speaking African Countries"

This report is based on the translation practice from Chinese into French of the multimedia courseware of the Seminar of University Presidents from Francophone African Countries,an educational aid program sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of People's Republic of China and organized by Zhejiang Normal University.With its focus on higher education in China,this series of lectures cover issues like contemporary China and its traditional culture,graduate education system,higher vocational education system,gender inequality,fiscal system,personnel management,scientific and technological innovation in higher education institutions.It aims to promote Sino-African communication and cooperation in higher education and propose possible solutions to current problems.As the interpreter,I have translated and proofread all of the 12 multimedia courseware during this seminar.This report will review the translation process with a focus on the methodology regarding the translation of nouns,phrases,charts and tables,discuss the issue of cultural differences and compensative methods to make up for the loss in translation,and finally attempt to summarize a general strategy.This report consists of three chapters:The first chapter elaborates on the translation project,presenting detailed information about its background,contents,speakers,trainees and the linguistic features of the multimedia courseware.The foreign-aid base of Zhejiang Normal University commissioned the project.The group of speakers,composed of administrative leaders and professors from Chinese universities,speak only Chinese,while the audience,mostly from the African educational circles,is well versed in French.Through a comprehensive analysis of the 12 multimedia courseware,some conclusions are drawn on its linguistic features:1.It is mainly composed of words,phrases,short,charts and tables;2.It covers a variety of contents;3.It is time-limited;4.It is space-limited;5.The multimedia courseware and the speech exclude and complement each other.The second chapter reviews in detail the process of the translation project,including preliminary analysis,translation practice and posterior summaries.The preparation is mainly about information collecting and organizing,including basic information of the trainees and the itinerary.The real translation process includes plan making,selection of translation methods and proofreading.In the end,I summarize the problems of the project and my inadequacies.The problems lie in three aspects:firstly and secondly,neither the organizers nor the speakers have paid enough attention to the translation of multimedia courseware;lastly,there has been rarely any research on the translation of courseware in China.At the same time,I became aware of my inadequacies:my attitude needs to change,my language capacity needs to be strengthened,and the scope of my knowledge needs to be expanded.The third chapter offers a analysis of some typical cases during this translation process.The analysis focuses on such aspects as words,phrases,charts and tables since they are the main components in multimedia courseware.To translate a word well,the most important thing is to fully understand it.Such understanding touches three levels,including the literal meaning,the grammatical and structural meaning,as well as the social and cultural connotations.Only after being understood on all these levels can it be fully and precisely translated without risking over-interpretation and the consolidation of meanings.Besides,it is necessary to check whether the translation communicates in the target language.As for the translation of phrases,special attention should be paid to terms,transposition and complement.Transposition is meant to change the grammatical category of a word without changing the meaning of the message,while complement aims to introduce to the target language the details that remain implicit in the original language.When it comes to the translation of lists and tables,given the limited space,translators have to follow the economic principle and choose the most effective mode of translation.This chapter also explores the cultural differences in translation and the method of compensation.Cultural differences are usually divided into three categories:disparity,absence and conflict,but this thesis will concentrate only on the second one.To remove this cultural barrier,I have combined transliteration and free translation,literal translation and free translation.In the conclusion,I propose a general method of the translation of multimedia courseware,which could be boiled down to three words:select,reduce and simplify.The basic idea is that based on a foll understanding of all levels of the original meaning,one needs to select the most appropriate expressions in the target language,reduce the superfluous expressions,and finally simplify the structure.Also,I have acquired a deeper understanding of translation theories.The translation project is developed from the standpoint of translator but translators should still respect the original texts and differences so as to achieve a complete and unified rendition.