A Report On The Translation Of Our Kids:The American Dream In Crisis(Chapter 5)

This is a project report on the translation of Chapter 5 of “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” authored by Robert D.Putnam,the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University.The book discusses the increasingly widening opportunity gap between poor children and rich children in American society.The main contents of this report are divided into four chapters:Chapter 1 is the translation project introduction,including project background,objectives,significance and structure.Chapter 2 is an introduction to the source text,including the author introduction,publishing facts and main contents of the source text.According to Katharina Reiss’ s text typology,the source text is categorized into informative texts.The translation of such texts should focus on accuracy and readability.Chapter 3 is the core part of this report,including a detailed description of Newmark’s “communicative translation” and its application in this translation project.In the meanwhile,this chapter also points out the difficulties encountered in the translation and lists corresponding solutions such as inversion,conversion,amplification,division and negation.Chapter 4 concludes the report with the experience and lessons from the translation as well as the problems to be resolved.It is hoped that this report can provide a reference for the translation of informative texts in future.