| Translation,ever since its appearance,has helped people to better communicate with one another,and in the meantime,it has facilitated the development of culture and civilization of all nations.We are living in an epoch in which science and technology are developing rapidly.Information is playing an increasingly important part in the economic development and cultural prosperity of all nations.In this information age, informative texts are pervasive in our society.They are used in almost every field of academic study and in every aspect of our life,for instance,science and technology, culture and media,trade and economy,to name but a few.Informative texts are in fact becoming the most commonly used texts.Therefore,the importance of informative texts can never be overemphasized.No nation can develop rapidly without communicating with or learning from other nations.Translation of informative texts, as a means to bridge cultural and information gaps between nations,has been playing a very important role in promoting global economic and cultural development,and China in particular benefits a great deal from the translation of informative texts.Producers of informative texts aim to convey information to readers and inform them of facts and discoveries about our real world.Generally speaking,the language of informative texts is characterized by conciseness,accuracy,objectiveness, practicality,briefness and concreteness.It is therefore imperative that translators of informative texts retain these characteristics when they reproduce them in the target language.Chinese translation theorists in the last century have formulated various theories and principles of translation,for example,the principles of"faithfulness, expressiveness,and elegance"by Yan Fu,the principle of"faithfulness over smoothness"by Lu Xun and the triple principle for translation by Liu Zhongde,etc. Yet,all these traditional theories focus only on literary translation and the transference of aesthetic values rather than the conveying of information and message.None of these Chinese translation theorists have paid attention to the special characteristics of informative texts mentioned above.Therefore,it is safe to say that the study of informative text translation is far from satisfactory,and the traditional theories seem incapable of guiding translators of informative texts in their professional engagement, which means that a new comprehensive theory is needed for guiding this type of translation.Functional translation theory,put forward in the 1970s by several German scholars,provides a theoretical basis for unconventional translation strategies.Under the rubric of functional translation theory come such conceptualizations as the Skopos theory of the German School,Newmark's text typology,Katharina Reiss' early work on text typology and language function,and Nida's functional equivalence.All these theorists study translation from the perspective of the function of languages and texts. Based on functional translation theory,this author stresses the importance of informative texts and discusses useful strategies for the translation of this type of text. In addition,a large number of sample translations of different types of informative texts,e.g.instructions,technical documents,news reports,etc.have been collected as data for discussions of the features and characteristics of typical informative texts.Finally,this thesis presents a number of methods and strategies for the translation of commonly used informative texts according to functional translation theory from a completely new perspective. |
