Translation Practice Report On Project Proposals For The 6th China Public Welfare Project Contest

The project proposals for the 6th China Public Welfare Project Contest – the original texts in this translation practice--are categorized as foreign publicity texts.Despite its late start in China,public welfare has been in full bloom for its vitally important role in poverty alleviation and the promotion of social harmony.The scarcity of research on translation for the purpose of public welfare,however,draws a sharp contrast with the growing demands for translation in this regard.As a constituent element of China’s soft power,foreign publicity translation is considered a communicative action between languages.Foreign publicity texts,touching upon notices on government policies and actual situation at both national and local levels,vary in genres and among the most representative ones are official documents.Bearing resemblance to official documents in diction and writing style for the consistency with national policies on civil affairs,the texts of this translation practice,therefore,fall into public publicity texts.The constructivist translatology proves instructive for foreign publicity translation.Since previous research on foreign publicity translation were mainly carried out from perspectives of the Skopos theory,functional equivalence theory and eco-translatology etc.,the constructivist translatology--a new paradigm that defines translation as a collective construction of human knowledge on a macroscopic level and a communicative action on a microscopic level--deserves more attention for its agreement with foreign publicity translation in terms of the communicative action.Hence,after an analysis of English translations of two proposals of public charity projects as a sample of foreign publicity translation,comes this report,in which principles,methods and techniques for translation of texts of this kind are summarized as a salutary lesson for translators.Difficulties of foreign publicity translation at the diction,syntax and context level are first explicated in the report,followed by,accordingly,solutions to them under the guidance of constructivist translatology as follows.Given the ubiquity of abstract and connotative words and expressions in foreign publicity texts,the correct understanding of words according to their contexts shall precede their rendering.In addition,given the distinction between Chinese and English in syntactic structure and textual cohesion,multiple approaches--converting voice,adding sentence constituents,structuring sentences with logical syntax and reorganizing word order within a single sentence--help to ensure a grammatical and idiomatic translation.Moreover,the translator shall keep the translation solemn and formal in writing style by imitating the original text in register,diction and syntax.The report consists of four chapters,the first of which is a brief introduction to the background and characteristics of the texts followed by a chronicle of the process of the translation practice and a sketch of constructivist translatology in Chapter Two.Chapter Three,as the core of the report,explains the guiding significance of constructivist translatology to the translation practice and illustrates the translation methods and techniques in conformity with the three criteria of constructive translatology by a threefold classification of diction,syntax and context.As a conclusion,Chapter Four sums up with the experience from this translation practice.