A Report On The Chinese Translation Of The End Of Education:Redefining The Value Of School

The report is based on the English-Chinese translation of The End of Education:Redefining the Value of School written by the American educator Neil Postman in1996.The book inquires into the meaning of school and believes that the core of school is to shape values,which should teach the young how to make a life rather than how to make a living.Since the theme and the purpose of the book are the same as the current innovation of Ideological and Political Theories Teaching in All Courses in China,it is of reference value to provide a Chinese version for domestic educators.The book is an academic work of the typical informative type.According to Reiss’ s text typology,informative texts are content-focused and emphasize language logic.The translation should accurately convey the information of the original text and conform to the norms of the target language to meet the requirements of accuracy,conformity and logicality.Guided by the text typology,this report explores how to choose translation strategies to meet the translation requirements of accuracy,conformity and logicality based on the characteristics of the source text from three levels.At the lexical level,there are numerous proper nouns,professional terms and culture-loaded words.The selection of the optimal equivalent and amplification or annotation of culture-loaded words are employed.At the syntactic level,complex sentences and long complicated sentences abound.The conversion between words or phrases and clauses and the reinvention of sentence structures are applied.At the textual level,conjunctions and substitutions are frequently applied to ensure cohesion and coherence.The omission and addition of conjunctions and the change of substitution into repetition are used.The report shows through practice that the text typology can help the translator grasp the translation point,understand translation choices and determine translation methods on the basis of analyzing the text type.Although the translator needs to consider many other factors such as the translation purpose,the function of the translation,the target readers and different cultures when choosing translation strategies besides the text type,the translation requirements of accuracy,conformity and logicality proposed by the text typology have great guiding significance for improving the translation quality of informative texts.