Understanding The Real Message In Academic Texts:Challenges And Solutions

Academic texts are an important tool to introduce Chinese academic theories in social science,technologies and other fields overseas,and that's why we should pay much attention to their translation quality.However,it is difficult to translate an academic book because of its professional content,abstract concepts and conciseness.This thesis is based on a case study regarding the English translation of a Chinese academic book,Global Cities.The author identifies three types of challenges in understanding the real message in the discussed texts,namely abstract structures and content,a large number of professional expressions,and loss of key information.Through case analyses,the author proposes the following strategies: i)properly adding and omitting information based on the context;ii)highlighting the focus of the real message;and iii)making the best of references to verify terms.Hopefully,this study will help improve the Chinese-English translation of academic texts and encourage other translators or scholars to study strategies in such translation.