A Report On The Translation Of The Meritocracy Trap(chapter 3)

This is a report on the translation of “The Coming Class War”,Chapter 3 of The Meritocracy Trap written by Daniel Markovits,which is published by Penguin Press in September 2019.The source text compares the current United States with the one in midcentury,profoundly analyzes the manifestations of elitist inequality that solidifies the class,and further points out that the skills and professional knowledge possessed by the elites have become the means for them to manipulate economic and political life.The source text belongs to sociological text.This project tries to shed a light on the application of functional equivalence theory in the translation of sociological text.Because the style of sociological text is closely related to the specific social and cultural background,the translation based on the theory can make the target readers have a better understanding of sociology,a relatively unfamiliar field.The main content of the report is divided into five parts.Part one is the introduction to the translated project,including the background,objectives and significance of the project.Part two mainly discusses the background of the source text,including the introduction to the author,main content and language analysis.Part three serves as the introduction to functional equivalence theory and its specific application in sociological texts.Part four analyzes the difficulties encountered in the process of translation and corresponding solutions in detail.For instance,using interpretive translation,sentence reconstructing and conversion of part of speech to realize the functional equivalence between two languages.Part five summarizes the enlightenment,lessons learned and problems to be solved in translation.