A Report On The Translation Of Flying The Hump To China(Excerpts)

This is a report on English-Chinese translation,which is based on the translation of the first four chapters of Flying the Hump to China by Steven C.King,a retired American hump pilot.Flying the Hump to China gives a detailed and vivid account of the author's hump flying experiences in WW ? and the translation of it can help Chinese readers to obtain more knowledge about the hump pilots.Besides,the translation can provide useful parallel texts for translators to refer to when translating similar texts and provide reliable historical facts for the study of hump pilots and other related historical study about WW ? in China.This translation report,aiming to produce a faithful translation that is idiomatic and easy to understand,is guided by the Relevance Theory of Translation.According to the theory,the cognitive context is the precondition for interpreting utterances and translation is a process of inference and a trilateral activity of verbal communication involving the author of the source text,the translator and the readers of the target text.Due to the difference in the cognitive context among them,the translator not only needs to interpret the source text correctly in its context by analyzing its context and inferring the optimal relevance between it and its context,but also needs to be well aware of the readers' cognitive context so as to produce a target text with the optimal relevance to its readers,i.e.a translation which not only creates adequate contextual effects and conveys what the author intends to express,but also spares the readers unnecessary processing efforts.Therefore,the major problem of this translation task is to form the optimal relevance between the target text and the its reader's cognitive context.In order to solve this problem,the translator has adopted a series of translation methods,including annotation,conversion of part of speech,concretization at lexical level,amplification,free translation,transformation of passive voice into active voice,the substitution of personal subject for impersonal subject,translation of affirmative sentences into negative ones and vice versa at syntactical level and the cohesive devices of lexical reiteration and lexical antonymy at textual level.By doing this translation task,the translator has discovered that the Relevance Theory of Translation has great significance in guiding the two main procedures of translation--the interpretation of the source text and the creation of the target text in that it helps translators to interpret the source text correctly and to produce a target text that is faithful and easy to understand.Besides,it has been discovered that the translation methods mentioned above can facilitate the formation of the optimal relevance between the target text and its readers' cognitive context.This report consists of five Chapters.The first Chapter is task description,including the background,the significance,the objectives and the problems of the translation task,anintroduction to the source text and its author as well as the structure of the report.The second Chapter is process description which consists of pre-translation,an introduction to the translation aids and the schedule for the report writing,while-translation,a description of the difficulties encountered during the translation process and the solutions to them as well as proofreading,including self-proofreading and proofreading by others.The third Chapter is theoretical basis,consisting of an overview of the Relevance Theory and the application of it in translation.The fourth Chapter is the case study at lexical,syntactical and textual levels respectively.The last Chapter is conclusion,including the major findings and limitations of this translation task as well as some suggestions for future translation practice.