A Report On Translation Of The Excerpts From Atlantic Migration:1607-1860 In Light Of Text Typology Theory

This thesis is based on the translation of the last three chapters of the book Atlantic Migration: 1607-1860 written by Marcus Lee Hansen(1892-1938),a famous historian in American history.The excerpts record the Europeans? excessive migration to America driven by all kinds of social and economic factors.To accumulate experience in the translation of historical documentaries and improve informative-texts translating skills,the writer took up the task on the translation program.According to the well-known British translation theorist Peter Newmark?s classification of text types,the writer categorizes the source texts into typical informative texts with the stylistic features taken into consideration.Newmark notes that the communicative translation strategy should be adopted in the translation of informative texts to better achieve the communicative purposes by producing equivalent effects on the target readers as that obtained by the source language readers.Besides,in order to preserve the expressive functions,the semantic translation is adopted occasionally to transmit the source information accurately and adequately.This report is based on Newmark?s Text typology theory and comprehensively describes the purpose and significance of the report,theoretical framework,translation process,quality control,time schedule,case analysis and relevant experience.Among all,the fourth chapter plays the vital part,which analyzes the translation practice from the lexical,syntactic and text expression levels in detail.At the lexical level,the core is how to translate colloquial,polysemic words and words with implicit meaning,and three major strategies,paraphrasing,discrimination and explicitation are adopted;at the syntactic level,the main focus is how to handle passive-voice sentences,parentheses structures and long sentences,accordingly,conversion of voices,linear-translation and reconstruction are introduced;at the contextual level,differences between the two languages are analyzed,and corresponding strategies of amplification and adaptation,domestication are emphasized and listed out respectively for translation of disputable and common expressions.The writer lists examples to illustrate the different translation strategies and respective effects.By summarizing the problems and strategies,experience in translating historical informative texts is accumulated for similar cases,and the writer?s translation competence can also be improved step by step during the whole process.