A Report On The Translation Of American Civilization: An Introduction From The Perspective Of Text Type Theory

This translation practice report is based on the English-Chinese translation ofAmerican Civilization: An Introduction. As an encyclopedic book on the United States,American Civilization: An Introduction is widely used as a history textbook in manyAmerican universities. As an academic monograph, it is a typical informative textconcerning specific fields and featuring strong logic and objectivity. It is alsocharacteristic of rigid style, preciseness in language and complicated sentencestructures, which highlight the importance of accuracy in transmitting the information.The translation of this book can help Chinese people get a comprehensiveunderstanding about America from the Americans’ perspective, which is of greatpractical significance.The examples discussed in this report are all chosen from the translation of theChapter7of the book. The author has encountered the following major difficulties inthe translation process, namely, the translation of proper nouns, culture-loaded words,long sentences and passive sentences. Under the guidance of Reiss’s Text Type Theory,the author proposes some translation methods and techniques during the case analysis,which include annotation, footnotes, literal translation, division and conversion ofpassive voice, aiming to transmit the original information as accurately as possible. Itis hoped that this report will be of some use to the research of informative texttranslation, especially the academic monograph translation.