A Report On The Chinese Translation Of The Art Of Readable Writing(Chapter 9-Chapter 12)

This report is based on the E-C translation.The translator chooses the ninth chapter to the twelfth chapter of the book,the Art of Readable Writing written by American writer Rudolf Flesch(about 14,000 words).This book focuses on the concept of readability and describes how to improve the readability of different articles.The four chapters selected by the translator mainly introduce some writing skills and methods in a straightward way,such as using colloquial writing,changing some prescriptive grammar rules,shrinking sentences,applying less rhetorical flourishes.However,due to differences in thinking patterns and grammar between the east and the west,some English learners’ writings are unintelligible for native speakers.And this book has no Chinese version yet;thus,doing the English to Chinese translation is able to provide guidance for English learners in China so that their writing ability can be improved.The original author has applied many examples to clarify his views so as to introduce appropriate writing methods and their significance.However,some instances are literary work or news reports,which contain many esoteric terminologies or long and complex sentences,so it is difficult to translate the original text correctly and distinguish the logical relationship of each sentence.Besides,comprehension as the basis of expression is a crucial point of translation practice.Therefore,this translator chooses the “Comprehension,Expression and Adaptation”framework put forward by Li Changshuan to write this report.The translator then analyzes some cases from the perspective of vocabulary and syntactic structure and utilizes translation skills to convey the source language accurately,including splitting sentences,altering sentence order,and adding or deleting information flexibly.Finally,the translation difficulties and skills are summarized with the hope to provide a reference for informative text translation.