A Translation Report On The Catalyst—How To Change Anyone’s Mind(Excerpts)

This translation project is selected from “The Catalyst-How to change anyone’s mind”.The selected original text is about 13,000 words.The book was published in2020 and was named one of the best new concepts of the year by The New York Times Magazine.The translator chose Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 for translation practice.Chapters 4 and 5 mainly introduce the two major hidden dangers that hinder others from changing their minds,and discuss how these factors affect others’ decisions through case analysis.The end of each chapter summarizes the solution strategies,which have practical reference significance.This book provides a powerful way of thinking and a series of techniques for those who want to change the minds of others,hoping to help readers change their social thoughts.The translation of this book provides readers with new ways of thinking and solving strategies,helping readers to correctly evaluate themselves and others in social situations,and build good social relationships.As a social psychology book,the book is an informative text with precise wording.The book covers a large number of professional terms,and there are a lot of long and difficult sentences and some synthetic new words in the case analysis of the book.Therefore,solving these translation problems is the focus of this translation task.This translation report aims to combine relevant theories and skills,and solve problems through detailed case analysis.The translator is guided by Peter Newmark’s text type theory,using a variety of translation methods,such as part-of-speech conversion,augmentation,subtraction,sentence reorganization,etc.,to analyze typical cases from two levels of vocabulary and syntax.After practical research,the translator found that under the guidance of the text type theory,combined with the above translation methods,the translation of this type of text can be effectively completed.In addition,the translator also found in the translation process that it is a good translation method to sort out the sentence structure and divide the long sentence into short sentences for long and difficult sentences.Through this translation,the following conclusions can be drawn: 1)For translations that require high industry background knowledge,sufficient preparation must be made;2)For the translation of long and difficult sentences,decomposing the sentence structure is an effective method;3)For the translation of information texts,the authenticity,accuracy and readability of the translation must be guaranteed.At the same time,the translator also hopes that the translation of this book can have a certain reference value and guiding significance for future translation work.