A Report On The Translation Of Your Mind And How To Use It—A Manual Of Practical Psychology(Excerpts)

The outstanding and rapid social and economic development in China during the last three decades has made the society changing every day.In such a quick-changing world,people gradually find that mental health is the essence of a happy and harmonious life.So,they are paying more and more attention to mental health,and the role of psychology is becoming more and more prominent.In the meantime,psychological wellbeing has also been recognized as a crucial social and public issue in China.However,at present,a large number of people are still lacking even the most basic psychological knowledge.In view of these,introducing English books on psychology by means of translation is more realistic than ever before.The source text that the translator selected for translation project is the first eight chapters of Your Mind and How to Use It—A Manual of Practical Psychology written by the famous American psychologist William Walker Atkinson in 1911.This book,especially the selected chapters for translation,introduces some basic concepts and terminology related to psychology,including consciousness,perception,attention,memory and so on.It also explains mechanisms of the brain and general rules of psychological activities and gives corresponding suggestions for the training and utilization of the mind.From the book,people can learn about their own brain and mental state,keeping a calm and healthy mind and relieving stress in the increasingly faster work pace.The book consists of thirty-one chapters in total,and the selected ones for translation are chapters 1-8,totaling 10,000 words.This translation report is divided into four parts: task description,process description,case study and conclusion.Under the guidance of functional equivalence theory proposed by Eugene Nida,and in view of the characteristics of the chosen chapters,the translator tries her best to achieve the same functions and effects as those of the original text.In the case study part,the translator uses this theory to tackle different problems and difficulties encountered in the translation process and summarizes them into lexical level and syntactical level respectively.Implementing this translation project is expected to achieve two goals.Firstly,the translator wants to make further progress in translation by applying the skills and strategies learned in the School of Interpreting and Translation Studies.Secondly,the translator sincerely hopes this translation text will provide a simple,useful and practical guide for those who are interested in psychology and brain science.