A Report On E-C Translation Of A Possible Anthropology （Excerpts）

As an independent discipline,anthropology was born in the West in the mid-nineteenth century.The internationalization degree of Chinese anthropology is increasing day by day,and there are emerging diversified research directions.Understanding and grasping the history and knowledge of anthropology is conducive to better understanding the nature of this subject and injecting the new energy into the development of Chinese Anthropology.This translation report is based on the translation practice of introduction and chapter one of an academic text which is called A Possible Anthropology written by the American anthropologist Anand Pandian.The source text is an academic text related to anthropology,which elaborates Anand Pandian’s reflections and philosophical thinking on anthropology.This book is highly academic,rich in profound discussions,numerous references,complex sentence structures and strong logic.This book is of great significance for deepening the reflections on anthropological research and research techniques,which is conducive to the popularization of relevant knowledge.Functional equivalence theory put forward by Eugene Nida is chosen as the guiding theory of A Possible Anthropology,and this report uses case analysis method to analyze the source text at lexical,syntactic and discourse level,exploring specific translation strategies for the translation of anthropological texts.At lexical level,the source text contains a large number of specialized words,polysemous and nominalization words.In this context,the translator adopts main translation methods such as literal translation,free translation and transformation of parts of speech.As for syntactic level,passive sentences,elliptical sentence and sentences with implied meanings are the major subjects to be discussed.Therefore,conversion and amplification are corresponding methods to achieve the maximum equivalence.With regard to discourse level,a number of long and difficult sentences as well as cohesion methods are discussed.Hence,reconstruction and explicitation are primarily adopted as main translation methods in these cases.In the process of the translation practice,it is found that the functional equivalence theory can effectively guide the translation of anthropological academic text,combined with effective translation methods.In conclusion,this report is aimed at using appropriate and natural language and proposing effective translation thinking,so that the target language readers can get as close responses as possible to that of the source language readers.In this way,the readability of the translation practice is enhanced and the quality is improved simultaneously.This translation practice report will help domestic researchers to have a deeper understanding of functional equivalence theory and provide some references for future translation practice of anthropological texts.