A Report On The E-C Translation Practice Of Gender,Agency And Change(Chapter Seven)

The source text of this translation practice report originates from the seventh chapter of Gender,Agency and Change.The chapter is written by French anthropologist Guy Massat,which mainly introduces the author’s on-the-spot investigation of the events that took place during the elections in the Praia region and the first six months of the new republic during the period of major political changes in Cape Verde from 1990 to 1991.At the same time,the author analyzes the gender and political issues reflected in the language practice of Cape Verde’s urban people,especially the lower social economic groups,in their daily life with the help of discourse practice theory.The source text is a scholarly anthropological paper,which involves many professional anthropological terms,complex long and difficult sentences,impersonal subject sentences and passive sentences.In addition,some parts of the text are abstract,making it a challenging task to translate.In the translation process,the accurate expression of professional terms and difficult vocabulary,the mitigation of linguistic differences in syntax and the manifestation of the discourse logic are the major challenges encountered in the translation practice.At the lexical level,the translator follows the principle of terminological accuracy and determines the meaning of the terms in context in which they appear.For English static and abstract words,the part-of-speech conversion and the meaning extension are adopted.At the syntactic level,in order to reduce the comprehensive difficulties caused by language differences between Chinese and English,division and reconstruction are used for long and difficult sentences.Amplification is employed for impersonal subject sentences.The translation of passive sentences adopts the conversion of voice method.Finally,at the textual level,in order to avoid readers having difficulties understanding the text,two methods of reference and conjunction are adopted for the invisible discourse logic in the text.Through this exercise of translating,the translator has accumulated knowledge and terminology about anthropology,and has acquired an extensive comprehension of various translation methods and techniques.Simultaneously,the translator is deeply aware that translators must supplement the background information knowledge of the original text before translation,skillfully utilize the ability of information search in translation,and repeatedly revise and polish the translation after translation.Moreover,translators should also improve the skills in analysis and understanding and the ability of bilingual transformation,which are beneficial for their later translation practice.Finally,the translator hopes that the experience summed up in this translation practice can provide reference for the translation practice of the similar type of text.