A Report On The Translation Of The Meritocracy Trap(Chapter 2)

This is a report on the translation of The Harms of Meritocracy,Chapter 2 of The Meritocracy Trap written by Daniel Markovits,which is published by Penguin Press in September 2019.It is sociological text.The source text discusses about the inner work of the meritocracy system,social and economic situations under the system,including income,education,work and so on.And it shows three main harms: unequal educational opportunities as well as outcomes,meritocratic assault on status and income of middle class,and psychic harm.The purpose of the translator is to convey the meaning and contents of the original text under the guidance of the Functional Equivalence Theory,and to provide corresponding translation solution for each translation difficulty.The main content of this report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the translation project description,including project background,objectives and significance.The second chapter introduces the main content of the source text,including the relevant information of the author as well as lexical and syntactic characteristics of the source text.The third chapter mainly introduces Eugene Nida’s Functional Equivalence Theory and its application in this translation report.The fourth chapter is about translation difficulties and corresponding solutions.And it will analyze the feature of the source text from lexical level and syntactic level so as to solve the translation difficulties.The difficulties lie in the translation of culture-loaded words,passive sentences and parenthesis sentences.The methods include explanatory translation,voices shifting and sentence restructuring.The fifth chapter summarizes the lessons,implication and unsolved problems in the translation project.