Reiss’s Text Type Translation Theory As Guidance In Environmental Protection Publicity And Education Material Translation

The author (also as the translator) has translated the book The Youth Guide to Biodiversity (excerpt)(published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in2013). According to the author, the book is recognized as environmental protection publicity and education material, which is used in environmental protection publicity and education activities and belongs to the applied text. Translation is a complex behaviour that should take many factors including multiple text functions, translation purposes, reader’s abilities and author’s targets into consideration. As a result, translators have to make tough decision in using different translation methods for better translation. As in the mentioned material translation, translators will also face the same challenge because there are different themes, content and target readers. Then what kind of translation methods can be applied to better facilitate the translating process and the translation?Focusing on text, Reiss’s text type translation theory divides diverse text into three types, informative, expressive and operative, and raises an idea of how to choose different translation methods depending on corresponding text types. From the author’s perspective, the book should be regarded as informative text and operative text, because it concentrates on publicity and education. Could Reiss’s text type translation theory act as guidance in translating the book in practice?The thesis studies on the translated version, analyses the issue of how to decide what text type the book belong to and how to choose translation methods in accordance with different text types while translating, under the guidance of Reiss’s text type translation theory. It also discusses the translation process of applying the mentioned translation theory, and the guiding significance and limitation of the text type translation theory to the book. In the end, the thesis draws a conclusion that Reiss’s text type translation theory is of positive guiding significance as well as, to a certain degree, limitation to the translation of this book.