A Report On Translation Of Food Explorer(Chapter Four And Chapter Five)

The source text of this translation report is taken from the fourth and the fifth chapters of Daniel Stone’s Food Explorer.These two chapters focus on the journeys of David Fairchild,a famous American botanical explorer,and his patron,the American millionaire Barbour Lathrop,to explore and introduce new plants around the world in the19 th century.As a biography,it involves a lot of knowledge of botany,American food history and agricultural economics,which is not only intuitive,extensive and intergenerational,but also embodies the spirit of scientific innovation and contains enlightening philosophies of life.Under the background of China’s accelerating the construction of an innovation-oriented country and realizing the upgrading of agricultural industry,the book has a certain reference value for Chinese scholars in this field.The translation practice report consists of four parts: the first part is the description of the translation task,which mainly introduces the material sources,the introduction of the author and the translated works as well as the significance of its topic.The second part is the description of the translation process,which mainly includes the reading and analyzing of the source text before translation,the selection of translation-aid tools and translating strategies as well as the grasp of translation difficulties which is the focus of post-translation revision and case analysis.The third part is the translation case study,in which the author analyzes the key and difficult samples from the lexical,syntactic and textual levels.At the lexical level,it mainly discusses the meaning of key words.At the syntactic level,appositive,parenthetical,passive,attributive and adverbial clauses with typical English characteristics are selected.The fourth part is a summary of the translation practice.After translating,the author realizes that,in the future translation practices,the author needs to strengthen the flexible use of English and Chinese bilingualism,fully deepen the understanding of the professional knowledge involved in the field,and cultivate the sense of translator’s responsibilities.