A Report On The E-C Translation Of An Ecosystem Services Approach To Assessing The Impacts Of The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill In The Gulf Of Mexico(Excerpts)

Catastrophic oil spill events repeatedly occur with the continuous exploitation and utilization of offshore oil.The international community expresses a great deal of concern about the pollution problem of oil spill.The source text of this translation practice is excerpted from a sci-tech report entitled “An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico”(Oil Spill hereafter)by the National Academies Press.The author selects the fourth Chapter of the offshore oil report including two aspects: oil spill response technology used during and after the major event in the Gulf of Mexico and the assessment of the oil spill event’s potential impact on ecosystem services.The translation report consists of four parts.The first part is a brief introduction to the background of the translation task and the language features of the source text.Compared with developed countries,there are fewer research achievements in the field of oil spill response technology in China,so the author takes “Oil Spill” as the source text.She also finds that the language features of the source text lie in its accurate and concise vocabulary,objective and standard sentence and logical discourse.The second part follows three steps of translation.Step one includes parallel text reading,translation tools selection and glossary preparation.Step two is the analysis of the source text and its expression in the target text.Step three is proofreading and self-examination.The third part makes a case study from the lexical,syntactic and textual levels.At the lexical level,the author adopts the translation methods of literal translation and transference to deal with the technical terms and abbreviations.At the syntactic level,the translation of attributive clauses,the passive and long sentences are discussed,the author adopts the techniques of conversion and division to produce readable Chinese sentences.At the textual level,the author focuses on the translation between sentences and paragraphs,employing the translation techniques of addition,ellipsis and combination.The fourth part concludes that the report not only broadens the author’s horizons,enriches her with the expertise of oil industry and translation theories,but also make her gain some experience of the translation in the sci-tech field.Through this translation report,the author acquires knowledge of new technologies.Hopefully,the report can provide some reference for the translation of sci-tech text especially in the oil,and it aims to help promote the development of domestic oil spill technology.