A Report On The Chinese Translation Of Permanent Present Tense

The translation report is based on the translator’s Chinese translation of Permanent Present Tense.Part memoir and part scientific history,the nonfiction is a compassionate account of the life and contributions of H.M.—a well-known amnestic patient—and a comprehensive review of the neuroscientist field,falling into the category of medical narrative texts.Such texts are still rarely seen in Chinese literature,and there exist few studies on their translation.After having a good grasp of translation theorists’ research on the notion of translation equivalence and of the linguistic features of medical narrative texts,the translator has finally made up her mind to use Nida’s functional equivalence for guiding the translation of Permanent Present Tense.The purpose of the report is to explore the translation features of such texts at lexical and semantic,sentential and textual levels through the translator’s Chinese translation under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence,and the translator is hoping that the report can bring people some clues or new ways of thinking when translating this kind of texts in the future.There are five chapters in the report.The first chapter is a description of the translation project,including three parts: translation task,analysis of the original text and specific requirements of the Project Commissioner.The second chapter describes the translation process involving pre-translation,translation and post-translation.The third chapter presents the previous studies on equivalence in translation theories,expounds on the theoretical framework of Nida’s functional equivalence,and then discusses the application of Nida’s functional equivalence to medical narrative text translation.The fourth chapter is case studies under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence,containing four parts: lexical and semantic equivalence,sentential equivalence,textual equivalence and translation difficulties & solutions.And the last chapter briefly summarizes the translator’s gains and limitations of the translation practice and the report.