A Report On The E-C Translation Of Touch In The Time Of Corona: Reflections On Love, Care, And Vulnerability In The Pandemic (Excerpts)

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,the author chose chapter 2 of Touch in the Time of Corona:Reflections on Love,Care,and Vulnerability in the Pandemic,co-authored by two associate professors Henriette Steiner and Kristin Veel from the University of Copenhagen,Denmark,as the source text for the translation project report.The chapter focuses on the role of the mask as a cultural technique that reflects underlying political,economic,ethical,cultural and ecological issues,provoking readers to contemplate carefully how to build a human community with a shared future in the post-pandemic era.Guided by Nida’s functional equivalence,the author aims to explore the possibility of achieving the most natural equivalence in English-Chinese translation as well as translation methods to realize this goal.In the process of translating,the author identified difficulties at the lexical,syntactic,and textual levels as well as solutions:for the three major difficulties at the lexical level,namely,specialized words,polysemy,and different parts of speech,the translator needs to determine the meaning of words according to the context and Chinese expression habits and make appropriate lexical transformations;At the syntactic level,the translator should convert the passive voice,omit long expressions,add implied meanings,and split the original text to make the translation natural and concise;At the textual level,the translator needs to reconstruct the text,adjust the order of words,and clarify or omit references and conjunctions in order to compensate for the huge differences in logical cohesion and coherence between Chinese and English.Through comprehensive analysis and revision of the translation project,the author argues that translators must employ a variety of translation techniques flexibly,focus on readers’ reactions,and concentrate on the preservation of the original style and rhetoric in the translation process.In exploring the theory of functional equivalence to guide the translation project,the author hopes to raise the awareness of other translators and readers about the pandemic and to elicit in-depth thought on how to construct the self and relationships with people,species,and objects in the post-pandemic era.