A Report On The Translation Of Big Potential(Excerpts)

This report is about the translation of the first three chapters of Big Potential written by Shawn Achor,who is the New York Times bestselling author and one of the leading researchers in the field of positive psychology.Achor emphasizes the significance of cooperation in the pursuit of happiness and success through sharing working experiences in Fortune 500 companies and surveys in more than 50 countries.So far,there has been no Chinese version of the book in China.According to the characteristics of the translated text,the translator chooses Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory as the guiding theory of the translation report.The report is divided into five parts: task description,process description,theoretical framework,case study and conclusion.Through combining specific translation cases with Functional Equivalence Theory,the translator discusses some key and difficult problems at both lexical and syntactical level,and explores the translation skills adopted during the translation.At lexical level,conversion and transformation are major translation skills.The translator changes the forms of words through comparing the differences between English and Chinese,given the context of the source text.At syntactical level,the translator adopts the translation skills of addition,inversion and division to make the translation consistent with Chinese expressions and acceptable for target readers.This translation practice is of great significance to guide the translator in translating similar literary works in the future.While writing the report,the translator has greatly improved her translation,writing and research abilities.However,the report still has some limitations.Meanwhile,functional equivalence has four aspects,including lexical,syntactic,textual and stylistic equivalence.Owing to the limited space of the report,the translator only discusses translation problems at lexical and syntactic level.Besides,the translation still has some defects as a result of the translator’s insufficient translation experience and knowledge base,which requires the translator to further enrich her translation experience and improve her translation ability.