A Translation Project Report On The Great American University (an Excerpt From Chapter14)

This is a translation report on The Great American University written byJonathan R. Cole, a famous socialist. The book comprehensively introduces Americanuniversities with respect to their glorious development, the contributions they havemade and challenges they are confronted with at present. It has earned goodreputation after being published. In this translation project, the translator selects onesection from Chapter14entitled “Internal Troubles: The Rich Getting Much Richer”which discusses the vicious cycle of competition between universities. The translationof this section can offer significant references for current Chinese universities in theirdevelopment and planning. With the skopos theory as a theoretical guidance in thetranslation process, the translator follows its three rules and adopts the translationmethods such as word conversion, semantic extension, splitting and semanticreconstruction to ensure the readability and fidelity of the target text, so that smoothexpression in the target language and faithful conveyance of the original meaning areachieved. There are four parts in the report. Part one presents the background, thetarget and the significance of the project. Part two analyzes the source text of theproject, including its author and stylistic features. Part three, with the focus on theprocess of translation, elaborates the difficulties for translation and the translationtheory applied in the project, and further specific examples are given to illustrate howthe translator adopts various translation techniques to cope with the difficultiesencountered under the guidance of the skopos theory. The last part concludes theenlightenments and lessons.