| The source text of translation project is an excerpt from the textbook Welding Principles and Applications,which was written by American welding educator Larry Jeffus and published by Delmar Publications in 2017.Introducing the basic theories of welding industry and applications of various processes,the book is widely used for daily teaching in American vocational schools,community colleges as well as welding workshops.In China,for workers in welding industry and researchers in welding institutes,target text can meet their demand for American cutting-edge welding knowledge.Therefore,target text has certain social values.Based on the word limit of translation project,the author chooses the first chapter Introduction as the source text,which has 16,050 words in total.As an English sci-tech text,source text is accurate,rigorous,scientific and objective in language,smooth and concise in expression as well as strict and clear in structure.Source text poses many difficulties during practice.Firstly,Chinese differs greatly from English in ways of expression,which makes the barriers in cross-cultural communication big challenges.In terms of text structure,at lexical level,there are tremendous terminologies in source text,which pose difficulty to precise comprehension as well as accurate translation;At syntactical level,there are many long,complicated sentences and passive sentences in source text.Only through repeated deliberation and careful study on the context can the author fully understand these sentences;At textual level,source text places great emphasis on connection and coherence,so regularly,between words and sentences lie logical conjunctions.How to translate these logical conjunctions and make target text accord with intratextual coherence as well as intertextual coherence can also be a problem.Besides,the author lacks professional knowledge of welding industry.And there are many flow charts in source text,which require the author to decide on how to use domestication during translation to make target text more readable and acceptable.These are all challenges posed by source text.In order to reproduce the writer’s creation motives,accurately deliver the information of source text via appropriate translation strategies and techniques as well as meet the reading requirements of target readers to the largest extent,the author takes skopos theory as the theoretical guide and conducts translation in a way that conforms to the skopos rule,coherence rule and fidelity rule.In the aspect of cross-cultural communication,the author adopts domestication to realize the communicative functions of target text.In terms of text structure,the author also adopts certain translation strategies and techniques in order to accurately and fluently deliver the information of source text.At lexical level,the author mainly adopts literal translation,noun-verb conversion and pronoun explanation;At syntactical level,the author mainly adopts sequential translation,splitting translation,recasting translation and comprehensive translation;At textual level,the author mainly adopts amplification translation of hidden logical conjunction,omission translation of personal pronoun and amplification translation of hidden information.Besides,the author also reads many parallel texts,looks up related corpuses and uses Trados to create a terminology database so as to ensure that target text can accurately and fluently deliver the information of source text and that the communicative functions of target text can be realized.In a word,target text accurately and fluently delivers the information of source text to target readers,which includes basic theories of welding industry and applications of various processes.Through the translation practice on Welding Principles and Applications,the author learns how to,under the guidance of skopos theory,overcome barriers in cross-cultural communication and difficulties posed by text structure of source text.Due to the barriers in cross-cultural communication and difficulties posed by text structure of source text,target text still suffers from some non-equivalence and translationese,but overall,target text reproduces the writer’s creation motives and meets the reading requirements of target readers. |
