Practice Report On Translation Of Abstracts In Sci-tech Papers Under The Guidance Of Semantic Translation And Communicative Translation (E-C)

In the twenty-first century with overloaded information, some researchers and readers tend to read only the abstract of a paper with the advent of abstract databases; even many readers see an abstract separately from the rest of the paper. Therefore, good translation of abstracts in sci-tech papers plays an important role in introducing academic achievements from outside China and strengthening the interchange between academic circles home and abroad.The author was entrusted by the Abstract Editorial Department for Nonferrous Metals in the library of Central South University to translate English abstracts into Chinese in several famous international academic journals in metallurgy and materials science field. Based on the author’s personal translation practice, this thesis, in the form of practice report, describes the translation task and task process, analyzes the problems in translation and reviews translation skills adopted during E-C abstract translation in sci-tec papers under the guidance of Newmark’s semantic translation (ST) and communicative translation (CT). With these efforts the author hopes the target text can be accurate in conveying truthful information of the source text; concise and clear, comprehensible and acceptable to the readership; in accordance with the norms of Chinese This report consists of four chapters. The first chapter is an introduction about the background of the task, requirements from the client. Moreover, the features of English abstracts are analyzed in terms of lexical, syntactic and textual levels. In the second chapter, the task process is described in terms of pre-translation work, translation process and post-translation work. Before translation, the source text was read through carefully; translation tools and translation theory--Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation are determined. Translation process was almost carried out according to the time schedule for translation and the quality of target text is properly controlled. After several reviews on the target text, it was handed to the supervisor and professionals for reexamination and finally the feedback from the client was reached. The third chapter is the core of the report. In this chapter, principles to guide the E-C translation of abstracts in sci-tech papers are summarized under the enlightenment of Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation, i.e. accuracy, acceptability, standardization. Then problems in translation are classified and analyzed in the direction of semantic translation and communicative translation and the three principles. Specific translation skills are proposed accordingly at lexical and syntactic levels. In the last chapter, the translation practice is summarized from such aspects as experience of the practice, requirements on professional translators and gains from the practice.This report via a case study in turn has proved the feasibility and explanatory power of semantic translation and communicative translation in E-C abstract translation. It has been fully learnt that bilingual competence and professional knowledge are the quality guarantee of translation of abstracts in sci-tech papers.