A Report On E-C Translation Of We Danced All Night:A Social History Of Britain Between The Wars (Excerpts)

This report is based on the translation practice of We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Two World Wars.In this book,Martin Pugh,the author,describes the transformation and changes of British society between 1919 and 1939.The translator chooses the first and last chapters as the translation materials,for they are closely related to the war,and tries to explore the solutions to the important and difficult problems in the translation of social history texts from the perspective of compensatory strategies under Hermeneutic Motion by George Steiner.The core part of this report is the fourth chapter.The translator combines several cases and focuses on the features of social-history texts.Compared with other texts,the culture-loaded words in social history texts are often more complex than those in ordinary texts.The translator applies various translating techniques,including word addition,annotation and extension translation,in order to solve culture-loaded words in different categories,such as social,military and religious.Another characteristic of social-history texts is the frequent use of quotations,which is particularly prominent here.The translator classifies the quotations and concludes that there are three elements easily missed in quotation translation,namely information,style and emotion.Finally,in view of the common problems in text translation of social-history,such as translation of cohesive devices and demonstrative pronouns,the translator also tries to solve them from the perspective of compensation strategies,so as to enhance the readability of the translation as much as possible and cater to the reading habits of Chinese readers.In this translation practice,the translator applies Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion of translation to the translation practice of social-history texts,as well as analyzes the translation strategies of translation difficulties such as culture-loaded words and quotations.The translator hopes to provide good translation practice cases and experience for the translation of social-history tests.