A Report On English-Chinese Translation Of Crisis Management And Emergency Planning(Excerpts)

Since the beginning of the 21 st century, a series of major disasters and emergencies have occurred across the world, bringing great challenges to governments’ administration.Emergency management has become an important issue that all governments have to face.China is a late starter in emergency management. It was not until the outbreak of SARS in2003 that China began its establishment on national emergency management system. In recent years, China’s emergency plan system developed rapidly, but its emergency legislation lags behind the plan system. That is to say, many functions of emergency plans are restricted by the lagging legislation, which blocks the implementation of emergency plans and affects the result of emergency operation.The thesis is a report on the translation of the excerpts of Crisis Management and Emergency Planning, which is written by Michael J. Fagel, an American professional emergency manager. The book is a textbook in the field of emergency management.Chapter 1 and chapter 16 of the book are the introduction on policy and laws relating to American emergency management planning, providing reference for China’s improvement on emergency legal system. The author chooses these chapters as the translation task’s source text, deals with translation problems under the guidance of Newmark’s Text Typology, and finally writes this report based on translation practice.The report is composed of four chapters. The first chapter introduces the background and source text of the translation task, including the reason to choose the book as translation task as well as contents and textual features of the source text. The second chapter describes the whole translation process in chronological order, including task preparation, implementation and adjustment of translation plan and proofreading. The third chapter is the focal point. In this chapter, under the guidance of Text Typology, the author formulates three translation principles based on the translation task, and summarizes the translation difficulties appeared and methods used in the translation from the perspective of professional term, sentence and discourse. The methods used include free translation, free translation and transliteration, negation, changing order, dividing sentence, logic reshuffling, and adding cohesive phrases. The fourth chapter is the summary of this translation task, including the deficiencies and gains in the translation practice.The accomplishment of the translation task will provide convenience for Chinese scholars in the field of public administration to investigate policy and laws relating to American emergency management, and provide reference for further improvement on the legal system of emergency management in China.