An E-C Translation Report On Severe Air Pollution And Labor Productivity-Evidence From Industrial Towns In China

This report is based on the translation of Severe Air Pollution and Labor ProductivityEvidence from Industrial Towns in China,an academic paper published in the magazine American Economic Journal:Applied Economics in January 2019,in which researchers from the Department of Economics of the National University of Singapore(NUS)collected data in two mills in China to demonstrate that severe air pollution will lead to a reduction in labor productivity.The translator analyzes the features of the source text as follows: Firstly,the authors frequently use personal and possessive pronouns in the source text.Secondly,some explanations and expositions in notes are featured with obscure expression.Thirdly,tables and figures are placed in the appendices of the source text with numerous specialized vocabularies,characterized by professionalism,accuracy and formality.“Redundancy inequivalence” between English and Chinese is obviously the key problem in this translation practice.Under the guidance of Nida’s Information Theory,the translator tackles these problems.To be more specific,in order to manifest the implied information of the source text,methods of explicitation,addition of logical connectors and extension are exploited to amplify redundancy.In order to omit the unnecessary redundancy of the source text,the translator applies the methods of omission of personal pronouns and possessive pronouns,omission of passive words and simplification of specialized vocabularyThis report aims at recording the real process of this translation practice.It is expected that the report would have its referential significance for future translation guided by Nida’s Information Theory.Also,the translator sincerely hopes that it would inspire other translators to employ cross-disciplinary theories to solve the problems in the future translation practice.