Report On The E-C Translation Of General Technical Specification (Excerpt) In The Xe Pian-xe Namnoy Hydroelectric Power Project

With the continuous advancement of the “Belt and Road Initiative”,China’s overseas engineering contracting business has continued to expand.There is great potential in the development of international engineering projects.In recent years,to enhance international competitiveness and brand force,Chinese companies are constantly seeking opportunities for multinational cooperation and exchanges to promote their overseas business.The Xe PianXe Namnoy Hydroelectric Power Project in Laos is an international project undertaken by Sinohydro Foundation Engineering Co.,Ltd,a wholly-owned subsidiary of POWERCHINA.The author,as an interpreter and translator,worked on-site for the above project in Laos from March to May 2019.This translation report is written based on a translation task that the author participated in during that period.The source text is a construction document namely General Technical Specifications which was agreed by the two parties of the above project and was translated by four translators.The translation material of this report is the first four chapters of this GTS the author translated,with a total of 13,000 words.In translation,the author was guided by Peter Newmark’s theory of text typology as well as his communicative and semantic translation strategy.The author mainly discussed the translation methods used in the translation of this text from the perspective of lexical level and syntactical level of engineering English.According to Newmark’s typology theory,this General Technical Specification is an informative text.Given that the characteristics and requirements of informative text are different from general text,the author adopted communicative translation as the primary translation strategy and semantic translation as the supplementary.The author also listed some cases in chapter 4 of this report to analyze the specific problems encountered in translation.Different translation methods such as linear translation,conversion,amplification such as adding a subject,object and connection words,inversion,and division were adopted when dealing with the following problems: the accuracy of technical terms,the specification of wording,the conversion of long sentences and passive voice as well as the adjustment of sentence structure.It is expected that this report can provide some reference for other translators in the translation of similar texts in the future.