The Model Thinker E-C Translation Report (Excerpt)

This translation report is based on the simulated E-C translation project of The Model Thinker,which is carried out by the author,exploring the difficulties and tactics of E-C translation of the book.In the process of translating,the author encounters a great number of model terms and nominalization.How to translate nominalization into Chinese has become the biggest difficulty to the author.The difficulties in translating nominalization in this report are mainly divided into three levels: lexical level,phrasal level and syntactic level.The lexical level includes(1)difficulties in the translation of nominalized verbs;(2)difficulties in the translation of nominalized adjectives.The phrase level includes(1)difficulties in the translation of nominalized phrases with implicit logical verb-object relation;(2)difficulties in the translation of nominalized phrases with implicit logical subject-verb relation.And the syntactic level includes(1)difficulties in the translation of long sentences with nominalized phrases;(2)difficulties in the translation of long sentences with nominal clauses.English is a language featured with abstract thinking.The use of nominalization can satisfy the objective and abstract expression ways of English.The core of this report is concerned with how to transform the common nominalization into Chinese expressions that conform to the thinking habits of readers in the target language environment without changing the meaning of the original text.In order to solve the translation difficulties mentioned above,the author refers to Catford's Translation Shift Theory,which holds that in translation,we should not only pursue formal equivalence,but also make some reasonable transformations,which is consistent with the focus of popular science text translation.In order to better explore the translation of nominalization,the author adopts seven translation tactics in theprocess of translating.In terms of the difficulties of nominalization translation at lexical level,the author adopts three tactics(1)conversion;(2)categorization;(3)annotation.As for the phrasal level,the author adopts two tactics(1)explicitation of logical verb-object relation and(2)explicitation of logical subject-verb relation.In terms of the syntactic level,(1)splitting;and(2)prominence of topic are applied.This report analyses the translation of nominalization through specific examples,searching for effective translation tactics to break through the thinking mode of English,so as to achieve the purpose of translating in accordance with the reading habits of Chinese readers.The author hopes to provide some references and suggestions for the students in this field through the translation tactics of nominalization mentioned in this report.