A Practice Report On The English-to Chinese Translation Of Spacepower Doctrine For Space Forces (Excerpts) From Prototype Category Theory

The author selected the Spacepower Doctrine for Space Forces as the source text of the translation task.This publication is the U.S.Space Forces’ Capstone Doctrine,which clearly stated an independent theory of space power for the first time from the five aspects of space area,national space power,military space power,the use of space power,and military space forces.This translation task is significant in the sense that it is not only suitable for the functional tasks of the author’s service,but also in line with the direction of China’s military development.It is hoped that the translated text could help our country understand the relevant requirements of military space power on the whole,and enhance our country’s overall national strength.Based on the prototype category theory,the translation report drew on the relevant concepts of “Category Shifts of Translation and Its Cognitive Interpretation” written by Wen Xu.According to the theory,the interlingual transformation between the original text and the target text is a process of category shift.Different languages have different cognitive models,which are restricted by concepts and experience.The process of category shifts reveals the prototypicality,dynamics and level of prototype attributes.As the core attribute of the prototype category theory and according to the principle of “family resemblances”,the prototypicality is the “summary”and “cutting” of the core characteristics of the objective world.While translating,the translator first compared the different prototypes of the source language and the target language at the lexical level and the syntactic level,and then produced the translated version focusing on the category shifts.As the basic attributes of the prototype category theory,dynamics and level can help the translator to optimize the translation,choosing the best diction and best syntactic structure.Under the guidance of the prototype attributes,the author analyzed the Spacepower Doctrine for Space Forces from these three aspects,discussing the application of the theory in sentence pattern transformation,structural transformation and syntactic transformation,in the hope of providing some insights for military science and technology texts.