Translation Practice Report On "Children In The Digital Age: The Current Situation And Future Of Learning And Language Ability

With the implementation of the strategy of Chinese culture “going global”,the English translation of books on minority cultures plays a crucial role in promoting the overseas dissemination of these cultures.Under such a circumstance,the translator has selected the third and the fourth chapters of Bu Yi Zu Feng Su Zhi(Records of Bouyei Customs),written by Xun He,as the source text of the translation practice.The book,published by China Minzu University Press in 1987,has not yet been translated into English.The selected text is mainly an introduction to the wedding customs and the courtship of the Bouyei.The source text falls into the genre of folklore texts and presents the following linguistic features.Firstly,the source text contains a large number of culture-loaded expressions.Secondly,segments in sentences are usually arranged in parataxis.Subjectomitted sentences and long sentences are abundant in the source text.Thirdly,paragraphs feature a spiral(induction thought)pattern.Finally,repetition is employed to achieve cohesion.On the basis of the features of the source text,Thick Translation Theory has been selected to guide the translation practice,because according to the theory,translators should fully consider the cultural differences between the source and the target languages.Meanwhile,the cultural features of the source text can be retained by the creation of a rich linguistic and cultural context for the target text.Under the guidance of the theory,case analysis is conducted from three levels: at the lexical level,the construction of the cultural context is of the first priority.Therefore,the implicit connotations of the culture-loaded expressions are added to the target text.At the syntactic and discoursal levels,more attention is paid to linguistic differences between Chinese and English.In this case,sentence and discoursal patterns are adjusted to create an acceptable linguistic context for target readers so as to facilitate their understanding of the cultural information in the source text.Through the translation practice,it is found that the Thick Translation Theory is applicable in guiding the translation of folklore texts.Under its guidance,the cultural connotations in the source text can be fully presented,which is conducive to promoting the dissemination of Bouyei customs abroad.