A Report On The Translation Of Bergson: Thinking Beyond The Human Condition (Chapter 2)

This translation practice report is based on the second chapter of Bergson:Thinking Beyond the Human Condition by Keith Ansell-Pearson,which analyzes Bergson's comments on the long philosophical poem De Rerum Natura and the causes of Lucretius' s “melancholy”.The book covers a lot of philosophical knowledge with rigorous writing and formal language.This translation is guided by Newmark's theory of “communicative translation”.This report describes the basic process of translation practice,and summarizes the problems encountered in translation from three aspects: vocabulary,syntax and discourse.In terms of vocabulary,polysemy is a common phenomenon.Translators should properly select the meaning of a word based on full understanding of the original text and reasonably use translation means such as word conversion to make the translation more readable.Syntactically,English is a tree structure,while Chinese is a linear structure.It is necessary to fully understand the mainly differences between English and Chinese languages and avoid the obscure translation.At the textual level,the translator analyzes the difficulties in translation from the aspects of cohesion and coherence.Putting emphasis on case analysis,this report combines theory with translation practice,records and summarizes the key points and difficulties in the process of translation,hoping to provide an case reference and an operable scheme for the translation of similar texts later.