An E-C Translation Report Of The Prepper’s Ultimate Food Storage Guide (Excerpt) From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Nowadays,food storage and food nutrition and health are receiving more and more attention,and they play an important role in maintaining the family’s daily life and improving the quality of life.The translation material is taken from the book The Prepper’s Ultimate Food Storage Guide,which shows how to build a stable and efficient food storage system,how to keep your food stocked for longer time,and how to avoid potential risks caused by food safety issues in life.The book consists of 4 chapters,and the report,which picks chapter 3 as the translating material,is made by using the Skopos theory as a guide.The translator analyzes the difficulties encountered in translation from the lexical,syntactic and textual levels,and summarizes the gains and deficiencies in translation practice.At the lexical level,for the translation of proper nouns,the paraphrase is used,along with annotation to increase the translation’s comprehensibility;for the translation of nominalization,the word class conversion is used to improve the fluency of the translation.At the syntactic level,literal translation is used to translate the imperative sentences in order to maintain the fidelity of the translation and achieve the maximum effect that the source text is intended to convey;for the translation of complex sentences,imitation,combination,syntactic conversion and omission are applied to maintain the coherence and structural balance of the sentences and improve the translation’s readability.At the textual level,the translation uses reiteration,which reflects lexical cohesion,and omits the logical conjunction to realize the grammatical cohesion.The goal of all these adjustments is to make the translation consistent with the reading style of the target language,and finally achieve the translation purpose.To sum up,under the guidance of the Skopos theory,translators need to choose corresponding translation strategies,methods and techniques to accurately convey the information of the source text,making the translation fluent and acceptable,and finally attain the expected translation purpose.This report also aims to provide some references for the translation of informative texts of reference books.