An English-Chinese Translation Report Of 14 Miles: Building The Border Wall (Chapters 1-7)

This translation report is based on the English-Chinese translation of 14 Miles:Building the Border Wall(Chapters 1-7).In this book,the author interviewed the local residents of San Diego to understand the impact of the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in this area.At the same time,the author’s own observations and experiences about the wall were also recorded in the book.Thus,translating this book can give Chinese readers a new perspective on the issue of U.S.-Mexico border wall.The purpose of this translation report is to find out and solve difficulties encountered in the process of translation.The translation difficulties embody in three parts: the translation of proper nouns including people’s names,place names and other proper nouns;mixed linguistic styles covering oral expressions of interviewees and written language of the interviewer;implied information in intra-linguistic context and extra-linguistic context due to the differences in culture and language structures between the East and the West.Through the analysis of specific cases,the translator proposes corresponding translation methods to address these difficulties.For the translation of proper nouns,in the requirement of delivering the source text effectively,established translated names are adopted firstly;besides,methods of transliteration and transliteration with annotation can be used to preserve the heterogeneity of some proper nouns;names of some organizations,institutions and companies in the source text are seldom quoted in China,thus literal translation can be adopted to keep both the content and the form of them.The second part deals with the temptations to unify the mixed linguistic styles of the source text.The translator adopts the translation techniques of omission and combination to make the oral expressions concise and coherent;for the refined and well-edited written language of the interviewer,division is adopted to produce a fluent,smooth and understandable target text.Last,to ensure the implied meaning can be clearly reproduced in the target text,the translator adopts various translation methods and techniques including addition,paraphrase and annotation in an effort to guarantee semantic equivalence and then enhance the readability of the target text.It is wished that the translation of 14 Miles: Building the Border Wall can give an extra choice of entertainment for Chinese readers.Most importantly,the report itself may provide a unique perspective on how to narrow down translation methods and on how to cope with specific problems in translating informative context.