Translation Of Alternative Fuel Automobile EIS Under Kommisarov’s Translation Equivalence

This report is on the English-Chinese translation of the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient(SAFE)Vehicles Rule(excerpt).The source text provides the environment impact assessment in life-cycle of alternative fuel light vehicles in terms of energy supply,material substitution,and fuel-efficiency technologies.It is written in science/technology text style,characterized by objective declaration,strict logic reasoning,compact sentences and normative language.In translation process the translator encountered such problems as follows:abundant unfamiliar technical terms,frequent nominalizations,complicated logic relationship,and limited background knowledge about alternative fuel automobile,which make the translation quite difficult.This report adopts the Kommisarov’s translation equivalence theory,combined with logic analysis method,to discuss the semantic equivalence and functional context equivalence in translating the informative text,covering the topics of maximal equivalence,syntactic equivalence,situational equivalence and communicative purpose equivalence.Meanwhile,the report explores the application of logic analysis method in examining sentence structure of source text and organizing sentences in target language.The main results are as follow.(1)The maximal equivalence requires high-degree consistency in vocabulary,structure and content between the source and target texts.In this translation it is applicable for translating the discourses of factual declaration,process description and logic expressions.(2)In English,singularity and plurality are important grammatical feature of nouns.In this translation some plural nouns are found carrying critical implications,which should not be neglected.Where such implications are not sufficiently expressed in translated text,it is prone to miscomprehension or semantic incompleteness.Therefore,the translator is supposed to identify the implied meanings carried in plural nouns and re-express them in target text.(3)Science texts are full of technical terms and some of them are seemingly common words but with specific definition in scientific and technological context,causing difficulty in determining their meanings.In this case,logic analysis and background information are helpful in determining the meaning of a word.(4)For a sentence in which the logic relationship is implicit,the translator needs to explore its deep structure through surface structure,clarify the implicit logic relationship by employing logic analysis and manifest it in target text,so as to achieve the deep semantic equivalence between the source and target texts.This process is so called as deep comprehension and deep translation.(5)In translation process,the translator may appropriately simplify the target text on the premise of ensuring the integrity of core information and logical structure,so as to make the translation concise,consistent and easy to read.Finally,the case study in this report shows that the application of Kommisarov’s translation equivalence theory in translating informative text in context of science and technology is helpful for translators to achieve deep comprehension of source text,therefore to improve the professionalism and accuracy in translation.