A Report On The E-C Translation Of Slippery Slope:Europe’s Troubled Future (Excerpts)

This thesis selects the first chapter and some sections of the sixth chapter in Slippery Slope:Europe’s Troubled Future as the translation material,and explores how to handle the cohesive devices in the source text.The book,Slippery Slope:Europe’s Troubled Future,provides a complete picture of Europe in the 21~stt century,introducing Europe’s current obstacles and describing its possible chances in the future.In order to well organize the information in the book,cohesive devices are necessary,because it is by these cohesive devices that elements within the text are connected together to build a semantic unit.Thus,whether the cohesive devices in the source text can be properly transferred into Chinese influences the quality of the target text directly.Reference,substitution,ellipsis,conjunction,and lexical cohesion are common cohesive devices.In the translation material,four kinds of devices are used more frequently;they are reference,substitution,conjunction and lexical cohesion.Thus,this thesis focuses on analysis of how to deal with these four cohesive devices.In fact,the ways different cohesive devices achieve the cohesive effect vary.Therefore,in translation,the features of each device and the specific context should be taken into consideration.Admittedly,if retaining the original cohesive patterns does not cause damage to the accuracy and readability of the translation,then it is available to keep the original patterns.However,in view of differences between English and Chinese in linguistic characteristics as well as cohesive patterns,the original cohesive patterns should not be mechanically reproduced in the target text.Instead,translators need to adopt translation methods flexibly,such as lexical repetition,omission,addition and so on,to ensure the accuracy and fluency of the translation.