A Report On The Translation Of “Ghostly Entities And Clichés: Military Interpreters In Conflict Regions”

This translation report takes “Ghostly Entities and Clichés: Military Interpreters in Conflict Regions” written by Caroline Gaunt as the source text,which is the eighth chapter of the book Mediating Emergencies and Conflicts: Frontline Translating and Interpreting edited by Federico M.Federici.First of all,Gaunt offers readers a detailed analysis of major stereotypes and clichés used by the western media and military to describe the native-speaker interpreters who work for them in Iraq and Afghanistan.The author of the source text,then,depicts and analyses realistic and cultural reasons behind these stereotypes and clichés,and at last calls for abandoning unfair treatments and instead more humanitarian care for these military interpreters.Culture-loaded words and expressions is the main difficulty the translator encountered.Thus,Eugene Nida’s classification of culture in his readers’ response theory is adopted in guiding the translation of culture-loaded words and expressions:cultural classification is not only the principle for culture-loaded words categorization,but also the principle for the choice of corresponding translation methods.This translation report consists of four chapters.Chapter one introduces the background information about the source book,source article,the author of the source article,and the significance of this project.Chapter two mainly presents the theoretical basis,i.e.,Eugene Nida’s readers’ response theory and his classifications of culture.The next chapter describes the translation process including preparatory work,difficulties encountered,solving methods with listed sentence examples,and translation revision.The last chapter is a conclusion.