A Report On The Translation Of The Handbook Of Crisis Communication (Chapter 25)

The rapid development of different fields accelerates competition which is often followed by all kinds of crises. Under these circumstances, an increasing number of government agencies, public institutions and companies set up departments for crisis public relations, which aim at avoiding crisis or handling it properly so as to build good public images and to bring benefits for the organization. The source text of this translation practice report is selected from Chapter 25 of The Handbook of Crisis Communication, which is mainly concerned with the communicator’s value creation practice, influences and characteristics of crisis as well as some possible strategies that can be applied to practice.Therefore, translation of this text is of practical significance for people involved in crisis communication and prevention.This report is theoretically based on Reiss’ text typology. Reiss(1971) classifies text into three types: informative text, expressive text and operative text. She(1981) further points out that mode of translation according to sense and meaning should be employed in translation of informative text. In this sense, translation of informative text should be in “plain prose”,without redundancy and with the use of explicitation when required. Besides, the language in the translated version should be the idiomatic usage of the target language and the whole translation should be readers oriented, also target language and its key norms oriented. A translator should strive to render the information in the original text in such a way that is acceptable and comprehensible for the readers of target language.According to Reiss, the source text of this practice report belongs to the informative text.Thus, the mode of translation according to sense and meaning is taken as the guiding principle, under which different methods are combined to make the translated version as plain and simple as possible. The translator should try to convey the accurate information in the source text in the way that target readers can accept.The whole report includes four chapters: Chapter one introduces the background and requirements of the translation task; Chapter two describes the translation process, includingpre-translation preparation, translation details and post-translation quality control; Chapter three presents translation difficulties and the corresponding solutions under the guidance of Reiss’ s text typology. Due to strong professionalism of the text, the translator encounters many problems such as translation of terminologies, long and complex sentences and so on.In order to ensure good quality, the translator combines omission, addition, explicitation,division, reorganization, conversion with adaptation under the guidance of Reiss’ s text typology; Chapter four draws a conclusion of problems and their implications in translation practice after the translation task has been finished, which will be useful in future translation.This report discusses seven translation methods and skills which are adopted in the translation of the informative text. It is expected that the report would provide translators of informative text and researchers of crisis communication with some helpful references.