Translation Report Of Environmental News From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Nowadays,the environmental issue is so serious around the globe that it has gained much attention from all walks of life.At the same time,environmental news is also gathering a lot of attention from the government,businesses,the general public and media.However,compared with the West where environmental news and research into it is ripe enough to become a professional subject in many universities and colleges,environmental news is relatively a new thing in China,which appeared in the media in the 1980 s.Therefore,it is meaningful to learn and translate environmental news from western media.To carry out this translation project and conduct a case study,the author has selected 22 English articles from the BBC and Daily Mail on the topic of China’s smog as the source text.On the basis of translation,this translation report is composed.The report first gives an analysis to the source text at three levels--lexical,syntactic and textual,and sums up the features of the environmental news.Then,under the guidance of the reception theory,the translator discusses the translation strategy and methods adopted in the process,summarizing the findings and limitations in the translation and hoping this report can provide a reference for future translation and studies on environmental news.The report is divided into five chapters.Chapter One is task description.In this chapter,the translator gives an introduction to the source text,including the background,the source,the number of words and contents,and elaborates on the significance of the task.Chapter Two is process description,which mainly includes preparation,translation and proof-reading.Chapter Three is text analysis.The source text is analyzed at three levels: lexical,syntactic and textual.Specifically,at the lexical level,it is found that the source text contains plenty of numbers,technical terms,proper nouns,abbreviations,neologism as well as vivid and metaphorical words.At the syntactic level,the translator finds that the news uses many loose sentences,long sentences,passive sentences,and direct and indirect quotations.At the textual level,the inverted pyramid structure is generally adopted in the news and at the same time many cohesive devices are used in the source articles,which greatly help readers pick up the main content in the shortest time and make the articles more readable.Chapter Four is case study.Under the framework of the reception theory,the translator summarizes and explains the translation strategy and methods employed in the process of translation from the levels of lexical,textual,and syntactic by citing the examples listed in Chapter Three.At the lexical level,some terms and phrases already have recognized equivalents in Chinese,so the translator has adopted the established popular names.Nevertheless,many have no recognized equivalents,so literal translation or free translation is widely employed with the feature of being clear in concept and easy to understand.In some cases,during the process of translating certain expressions,the translator has given some supplementations so as to comply with the conventions of the target language and make the translation more acceptable to the Chinese readers.At the syntactic level,in the process of translating a loose sentence,the translator has first learned the differences between Chinese and English.Then she has tried to fully understand the source sentence before cutting it into several sense groups.Next the translator identified which part of the sentence conveys the most important information and rearranged the order of the sense groups in Chinese.When translating long sentences,the translator followed the conventions of Chinese expression.The most significant thing is analyzing a long sentence,trying to nail down the major clause.Then,the translator tried to identify the subordinate clauses and find out the logical relationships between the modifiers and the head words.Next,the long sentence could be divided into several sense groups.Finally,the target text needs to be polished so that the translated sentence is fluent and idiomatic.For passive sentences,the translator often put them into active Chinese sentences,or into unmarked passive sentences,that appear in the“是······的”construction or added a subject.When dealing with direct and indirect quotations,if the quotation is cited from organizations or experts,then literal translation should be adopted to ensure the formal and objective character of the target language,and to some degree,this translation strategy can make sure that the translator is faithful to the author and meet the expectation of the target readers.However,if the quotation is cited from the informal speech of an individual,it is better to use free translation to make the quotation more vivid.At the textual level,as the Inverted Pyramid Structure can easily allure the reader’s attention,the translator has retained this text model in translation to maintain the same effect in the target text.In translation of the cohesive devices,the translator has resorted to recurrence,addition and omission on the basis of properly understanding the original text and at the same time conforming to the conventions in Chinese.Finally,the source text of this project contains quite a number of pictures and videos,providing supplemental information.In translation some information should be added because this ensures readers can have a better understanding of the text.Chapter Five is conclusion.The translator draws a conclusion of the findings of the project,points out the limitations of translation and provides feasible suggestions so as to pave the way for future translation and studies of similar texts.