A Report On The Translation Of The New York Times Book Review

Each year, the different types of new books published in the world are around500,000-600,000, with50,000in America and160,000in China. Readers who want tochoose right books need book recommendation. However, most of therecommendations are book introductions which based on marketing purpose. Thereare many factors to influence the objectivity, the comprehensiveness and the depth.The informative function and mentoring function of book reviews can exactly meetthose needs of readers. The informative function helps readers to acquire publicationinformation of books, making them easy to do reading plans; mentoring functionhelps readers to understand the merits and demerits of books, the difference of thesame kind of books and the common ground of different types of books, andmeantime mastering the academic trends as well as knowledge structure.Book review started late in China. It has following demerits: comment replacedby descriptionμ meanwhile descriptionμ is unable to reflect the information ofbooks and authors due to its thin content; critical spirit and critical thinking is needed;more praiseμ than serious commentμ. The New York Times Book Review is almost120years old, which has a high status in American book critic circle. Each year thebest seller list is the weather vane of global publishes industry, which has referencesignificance to Chinese readers and book critic circle.Through translating The New York Times Book Review, domestic readers could get the information of oversea books and authors, learn the western thinking modeand comprehend how westerners treat Chinese books and culture. Meanwhile, theserious and professional attitude of NYTBR could also be explored.Skopos theory was put forward in1970s by German scholar Hans J．Vermeer. Itproclaims that the purpose decides the selection of translation strategies. The guidingtheory of this report is Skopos theory. At the beginning of The New York Times BookReview, books were considered as news, and were reported in the view of journalists.Book Review is a special journalese which can be classified as soft newsμ. Therefore,when selecting translation strategies, translator takes newspaper translation standardsas reference.The report consists of five parts: Chapter One describes the translation materials,the project and the frame work of this report. Chapter Two gives an introduction ofthe guiding theory Skopos theory. Chapter Three gives a detailed description oftranslation process, including preparation process, translation process and revisionprocess. Chapter Four performs case analysis. Chapter Five summarizes the problemsand obstacles.