A Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of College(Un) Bound:The Future Of Higher Education And What It Means For Students(Chapter 8)

This report is based on the translation of the informative text College(Un)bound:The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students,written by Jeffrey J.Selingo in 2013,a renowned educator in higher education in the United States.The book discusses the present state and future of higher education in the U.S.,showing the impact of technology on the higher education system with examples from American universities.Since Chinese experts in the field of higher education have not fully realized the convenience and efficiency brought by science and technology,the author hopes to provide some enlightenments and reference for the reform and development of Chinese higher education through this translation project.With a grasp of the characteristics of the source text,the typical cases from the source text are analyzed in dimensions of words,phrases and sentences under the guidance of relevance theory.Besides,the translation strategies and methods that can be used in the translation of informative texts are discussed in this report.In the process of translating the informative text,attention is paid to the different cognitive environments of the source text readers and target text readers,as well as the intentions of the source text author and the expectations of the target text readers.Efforts are made with the aim to make the intentions of the source text author and the expectations of the target text readers meet.Starting from the principle of relevance,the translator intended to strengthen the contextual effects of the target text and reduce the processing effort of the target text readers.Translation strategies,namely,enrichment of the contextual assumptions and manifestation of the contextual implications,and translation methods of direct translation and indirect translation are employed to solve the problems in the translation process.Finally,difficulties in the translation process are summarized,and a conclusion of the study is drawn.Since translation is a kind of cross-cultural communication between two different languages,which may result in lost contextual assumptions and contextual implications in the translation process,a translator should not only manage the linguistic differences between the two languages,but also solve the problem of different cognitive environments.That is,in the translation process,a translator should make sure that the source text is understood according to the original context.Meanwhile,attention should be paid to the target text readers’cognitive environment and expectations.On this basis,the translator can decide which translation strategy or translation method to be used.As long as the principle of relevance can be achieved,the translator can enrich the contextual assumptions or manifest the contextual implications according to the actual situation and use direct translation or indirect translation flexibly to solve the specific problems in the translation process,so as to realize the optimal relevance and make the communication successful.