A Report On The Translation Of Dreams Of Flight-General Aviation In The United States(Excerpts)

This is a translation report,which selects Dreams of Fight—General Aviation in the United States written by Janet R.Daly Bednarek and Michael H.Bednarek as the source text.This book elaborates on the development process of general aviation in the United States from 1920 s to 1980 s.This report translates the preface and first two chapters of this book,and discusses the translation methods for words whose meanings have been shifted under the framework of meaning theory.Based on the theoretical framework of meaning classification,this report studies meaning shifts in E-C translation of technical text.Meaning shift refers to departure from conceptual meaning of words in the source text to choose their collocative meaning or structural meaning to convey meaning in the target text.Based on previous studies and theories,this report puts forward a hypothesis that in scientific and technological translation,literal translation happens a lot.But there still exists meaning shifts,which are mostly caused by Chinese collocation and context,giving certain temporary meanings to words.This report classifies 7 types of meaning shifts,including substitution,generalization and specification,weakening and intensification,and degradation and elevation.By adopting both qualitative and quantitative approaches,making statistical research table,and finding meaning shifts in words to analyze the types of meaning shifts in E-C translation,this report managers to explore the reason of these meaning shifts.Through statistic and empirical analysis,it can be concluded that there is a basic conceptual meaning of words in any language,on the basis of which new temporary meanings are generated in a specific contexts.There’s no exception in scientific and technological translation,and meaning shifts in translation are mainly caused by linguistic contexts.In this report,substitution takes up 55.9%,specification takes up8.5%,generalization 3.4%,degradation 1.7%,elevation and weakening 6.7% and intensification accounts for 16.9%.To some extent,the conclusion of this report has certain guiding significance for the selection of words in scientific and technological translation.It can also be a reference for the correct understanding of the meaning shifts in scientific and technological translation.