A Report On The Translation Of The Word For World Is Forest

This report is based on the translation of The Word for World Is Forest, one of science-fiction works written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. The story describes the conflict between the forest-dwelling natives of the planet Athshe—who possess a primitive and balanced social order—and the Terran colonists who exploit the planet Athshe and brutalize natives on it. The story ends with the victory of natives on Athshe over Terran colonists. It is a story about planet colonization which implicates ecological balance, oppression and repression, even a hint of Vietnam War.As an important part of popular literature, science fiction usually serves for general readers who read them for entertainment. That‘s why the translation of science fiction should reflect its literary uniqueness and be easy to understand. In order to meet these requirements, it‘s necessary for translators to choose the right translation techniques in the process of translating science fiction. Accordingly this report will focus on analyzing translation techniques adopted in the process of translating The Word for World Is Forest, based on the purpose of making the target text easy to understand and reproducing the literary charm of the source text.In the first two parts of the report, the translator mainly introduces the story of The Word for World Is Forest, the author Ursula K. Le Guin, pre-translation preparations, schedule and post-translation quality control. Then the translator analyzes the characteristics of the source text at the lexical, syntactic and textual level. In the fourth part, based on various examples at the lexical, syntactic and textual level, a case study is presented by the translator to analyze how various translation techniques, including translating by combining pronunciation and meaning, translating the meaning literally and freely, division and combination of sentences as well as omission and amplification etc., have been adopted in the English-Chinese translation process. The last part is the conclusion of the report, including major findings, implications, limitations and suggestions from the report.