A Report On The E-C Translation Of Academic Work Readings(Excerpts)

In an era of globalization,international academic communication has become increasingly frequent,so the importance of academic translation is self-evident.This translation practice material is excerpted from Chapter 2 to Chapter 4 of a 2014 academic work Readings written by Gayatri C.Spivak,a famous literary theorist and representative scholar of postcolonial theory.In this book,Spivak’s research covers a wide range of fields,including literary criticism,philosophy,sociology and cultural studies.The whole theoretical system of this book inherits the past and advances with the times,reflecting the process of contemporary western theoretical development.Therefore,the translation of this academic work is of practical significance,which not only meets the requirements of China’s development strategy of “bringing in” and“going out”,but also provides convenience for domestic scholars to understand the contemporary western academic development and evolution comprehensively.Spivak talks about the past and the present with her unique deconstructive thinking and penetrating insight,quoting from the classics and writing in an obscure way.These textual features reflect her distinctive personal style and bring great challenges to translation,requiring the translator to make an in-depth interpretation and even explain the cultural and historical significance behind the text to the target readers by adding additions and illustrations.Consequently,it is necessary to employ thick translation theory to guide this translation practice.Deriving from thick description theory,thick translation theory was first proposed by American translation theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah in a paper titled Thick Translation in 1993.The theory is conducive to further understanding the intention of the writer,reflecting the context behind the words,and recognizing different national cultures,so as to reconstruct the cultural and historical atmosphere of the source text,help the target readers better understand the source language culture,and develop respect for different cultures.This theory mainly relies on explicit and implicit annotation to achieve the maximum restoration of the source language culture,in which explicit annotation explains the historical figures,literary works and technical terms found in the text by the means of footnotes,in-text brackets and illustrations,while implicit annotation completes the annotated information by paraphrasing,amplifying and supplementing the ambiguous places with contextual meaning.Based on thick translation theory,this report analyzes the key and difficult points of typical translation from three aspects including terminology,rhetorical devices and discourses,so as to summarize the specific translation strategies.The key and difficult points include:(1)In terms of terminology,there are lots of proper nouns,technical terms and neologisms owning to Spivak’s wide involvement in many fields and her background knowledge of Bengali,English and French.(2)In terms of rhetorical devices,there are many rhetorical devices adopted such as metaphor,metonymy,quotation and allusion.(3)In terms of discourses,the cultural default originating from cultural differences complicates the establishment of the pragmatic coherence necessary for the comprehension of discourses.In addition,because it is written on the basis of a series of seminar speeches,the source text contains formal and informal languages,showing the speakers’ images.These will serve as typical translation cases to be discussed and analyzed under the guidance of thick translation theory in order to seek common translation strategies and skills in the translation of academic works for reference.Through translation practice and analysis,major findings could be summarized as follows:(1)For proper nouns,technical terms and neologisms,explicit annotation should be mainly used,in which footnotes or in-text explanations into brackets are added to explain the difficulties in the source text and provide relevant background information.(2)For rhetorical devices,implicit annotation should be mainly adopted for metaphor and metonymy to maintain the integrity and coherence of the text by integrating the content of the explanation into the translation,while explicit annotation is adopted for quotation and allusion to provide background information and facilitate understanding.(3)For the coherence and consistence of discourses,both implicit and explicit annotation should be applied to achieve coherence,reproduce the speakers’ images,and obtain the stylistic equivalence of the target text,so that the target readers can have a better reading experience.In summary,thick translation theory has guiding significance for the translation and research of academic works and can be used as a reference in practice.