A Report On The E-C Translation Of Targeting-error Fratricide In Modern Airpower: A Causal Examination

The report uses the military academic paper entitled Targeting-error Fratricide in Modern Airpower: A Causal Examination as the research corpus,and discusses how to solve the typical problems in the English-Chinese translation of military academic texts under the guidance of Reiss’ s Text Typology Theory.The source text describes in detail six incidents of friendly fire inflicted on the US military force and logically demonstrates to readers the four causal factors that lead to targeting-error fratricide.According to Reiss’ s Text Typology Theory,it is an informative text.The informative text focuses on the text content,and its primary function is to convey information,including facts,knowledge,opinions,etc.Its language is characterized by rigorous structure and clear logic.Based on the adherence to the principle of “accuracy first”,therefore,the translation of such a text should faithfully reproduce the original content in a fluent and easyto-understand target language.Based on Reiss’ s Text Typology Theory,the report analyzes the difficulties in the translation of such a military academic text from the lexical and syntactic levels.In terms of lexical translation,there are a large number of specialized military terms,contextual words and reconstituting words by word-formation in the source text.To accurately convey the information of the source text,it is necessary to consider the context,extensively consult relevant materials,and reasonably choose translation methods such as literal translation,addition,annotation and zero translation.At the level of syntactic translation,given the common passive voice,parallel structure,attributive segmentation structure and nominalization in the text,the translation skills of conversion of voice,conversion of part of speech,division,sequential translation and reverse translation are generally adopted to make the translation conform to the expression habit of the target language and accurately reproduce the content of the source text.Through this translation practice and relevant analysis,the translator hopes to provide some foreign literature on friendly fire for researchers in the field of military technology and enthusiasts of military affairs.It is also hoped that some gains from the translation report can contribute to the translation of military academic texts in English.