Chinese To English Translation Report On Specification For Engineering Test Of Railway Digital Mobile Communication System(GSM-R)

This report is about the Chinese to English translation of the Specification for Engineering Test of Railway Digital Mobile Communication System(GSM-R).The Author participated in this server-based translation project during his study in the School of Foreign Languages and translated about 10,000 Chinese characters.The Author begins with the introduction of the translation project in a general manner,pointing out the meaning of the project,elaborating the characteristics of the source text and specifying the requirements of the client.After that,the whole translation project is presented through two parts:preparation for the translation and the translation process.Before the translation,the work to be done includes task assignment,preparation for term base and translation memory,as well as the deployment of collaborative translation platform.In the presentation of this stage,how term base and translation memory work is illustrated and the ways to prepare term base and translation memory are introduced.In the presentation of the translation process,the key concepts are explained to show the idea of relevance theory.Studies in this field are listed and the applicability of relevance theory in scientific and technical translation is demonstrated.Then examples are given to showease the application of the relevance theory.The Specifcation is a typical scientific and technical text.The text is concise and formal with lots of terms used.Also,parallel structures,subjectless sentences and complicated sentences are employed.The Author adopted different strategies in the translation process according to the characteristics of the source text.With the goal of achieving optimal relevance,he used passive voice and formal expressions,and employed techniques such as reduction and division.The Author was involved in the translation project from the beginning to the end and experienced the collaborative style of translation which is now widely used in translation.The application of relevance theory in translation practice deepens the Author’s understanding of this theory and enhanced his cognition about translation.In addition,the adoption of computer-aided translation throughout the project showed how greatly assistive this technology is to translation nowadays.Hopefully,this report can provide reference for other translators.