A Report On The Translation Of Urban Village Renovation-The Stories Of Yangcheng Village (Excerpts)

Since the introduction of reform and opening-up policy,China has experienced rapid development and made remarkable achievements.The international community wishes to learn more about China and China itself also needs to project its new image and soft power to the rest of the world,which leads to a wave of translation out of Chinese.Urban Village Renovation: The Stories of Yangcheng Village(hereinafter shortened as Urban Village),authored by Mr.Li Peilin,a prominent Chinese sociologist,is one of the most frequently quoted publication in China.The book addresses the mysteries and diversities of urbanization in China,especially with regard to urban villages.The source text of the translation report is Chapter6,7,and 8,which investigates into enterprise-turned village and internal market,rental housing market and peasants’ rationality,social embeddedness and incomplete property rights.The difficulties in translating the excerpts include: economic and sociological terminology,cultural-specific concepts in Chinese,rhetoric repetition,long sentences,and sentences without a subject.The translation report is written on the basis of the "Comprehension,Expression,Adaptation"(CEA)framework.Comprehension refers to understanding the content and linguistic features of the source text;expression refers to the deliverance of what the source text has clearly stated,hopes to express and should have voiced;adaptation means that the translator should make adjustments to the source text,such as omission,compensation,paraphrasing or whatever means,when form equivalence(literal translation)is not feasible or when form equivalence is not conducive to achieving the designated translation purposes.Under the guidance of the CEA framework,the translator comprehends ambiguous expressions by resorting to background information;yields draft translations of terminologies through consulting with parallel texts in platforms like termonline,Wikipedia,Encyclopedia Britannica,Google;conveys rhetoric expressions flexibly;adjusts sentence structures according to the differences between English and Chinese;paraphrases culture-specific words or phrases;employs translation skills such as addition or omission to enhance readability of the target text.The translator hopes that the translation report will cast light on the translation of social science texts out of Chinese.