A Report On The Translation Of Chapter 2 In Participatory Research:Working With Vulnerable Groups In Research And Practice

This report is based on the translation of the second chapter of Participatory Research:Working with Vulnerable Groups in Research and Practice by Jo Aldridge.The second chapter of this book discusses the participatory research in which the vulnerable group of children and young people(especially young carers)take part.Translating this chapter into Chinese helps enhance recognition and understanding of such a group,and also provides some reference for the government and relevant social organizations and professionals who are willing to help and support such a group.In this translation report,the author discusses the problems encountered during the translation of academic discourse and accordingly proposes the translation strategies to solve these problems,based on the thematic progression pattern theory.Academic discourse is characterized by its dense messages,complicated syntax and rigorous structure.In order to translate the unintelligible academic discourse into an appropriate Chinese one which is both faithful to the source text and acceptable by the Chinese readers,the author first uses the 7 thematic progression patterns put forward by Huang Yan(??,1985)during the stage of understanding the source text and analyze it paragraph by paragraph,and finds out that there are mainly four thematic progression patterns that are used in the source discourse,including the parallel pattern,the constant pattern,the centralized pattern and the irregular pattern.Second,following the principle of being faithful to the source text,the author tries to retain the thematic progression patterns of the source text when doing translation so that the message progression of the translation can be consistent with that of the source text.Furthermore,due to the distinctive features of English and Chinese,the author applies such methods as thematic displacement and adjustment of the thematic progression pattern when reconstruct the translated text on the premise of retaining all the messages of the source text,in order to obtain a coherent translation with idiomatic Chinese expressions.When preparing this report,the author elaborates,by citing examples from the text,how the analysis of themes and rhemes and the thematic progression patterns have given the author an insight into the intention of the author of the source text and its message progression,and consequently helped the author construct an accurate and coherent translation.Relatively speaking,there are few cases of applying the theory of thematic progression patterns in translating academic discourses.The author hopes that,through the translating practice of this project together with its case studies,this thesis will provide good reference for the author's future translation of such discourses or for other translators'work on academic discourses.