Study Of The Translation Strategies Based On Underclass-the Birth Of A New Lower Class

The source text for this report on translation practice consists of three sections--the preface,Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of Underclass--The Birth of a New Lower Class,written by Kenji Hashimoto.The selections tell the main idea,and have seen many social and cultural elements,unfamiliar terms,and complicated sentences.Considering the translation difficulty,the author selected the sections for translation practice,to summarize the translation strategies and techniques adopted.In this book,the author focused on the gap between the rich and the poor and reveals the invisible side of the Japanese society.He classified Japanese people in terms of gender,age and education,and described the living conditions of the lower class objectively.He also analyzed the reasons of poverty given the data from surveys on education and income.In addition,he explained the origin of “underclass” and predicted the future of Japan based on the living conditions of the nation’s people.This book falls under the non-literary text,which is characterized by objectivity,logicality and professionalism,mainly for conveying information with simple and concise language.In this book,there are a lot of sociological and statistical terms,which requires the translators living in different cultural environment to complete translation task perfectly.In addition,the Japanese sentences of the source text are long-winded,and some translation techniques are hence required to change the order of the components of those long sentences.Moreover,there are many Japanese terms whose equivalent expressions cannot be found in Chinese.All these make the translation task difficult and challenging,and as a result,some plausible and effective translation strategies are needed to mount such difficulties.In this report,I selected Vinay and Darbelnet’s model theory as a theoretical framework to summarize the experience from this work.The theory provides basic methodologies for dealing with semantic vacancies in the target language and adjusting sentence structures.Therefore,the author believes it can provide theoretical guidance for the report on translation practice.This report consists of three parts.Part One: concluding how the author analyzed the text before translating.Firstly,the author analyzed this text in terms of style,wording and function.Then the author ascertained the style that should be adopted for the translation,and outlined the points to consider when translating non-literary texts.Next,the author summed up the difficulties in translating Japanese to Chinese in terms of lexicon and word order.Part Two: expounding the Vinay and Darbelnet’s model theory.Based on his understanding,the author elaborated on the translation strategies embodied by seven specific procedures.Given the features of ST and the translation difficulties,the author decided to select five procedures to explain them with detailed illustrations.Part Three: concluding how the translation strategies are adopted and what outcome is achieved with concrete examples.The author adopted the five procedures “Borrowing,Calque,Transposition,Modulation and Equivalence”,as guided by the strategies of direct translation and oblique translation,to improve his translation.The conclusion is as follows: when translating a text,the translator should make flexible conversions of words given the context;instead of being fettered by the surface structure of ST,the translator should,if necessary,make semantic shifts and reconstruct sentence structures;when dealing with proverbs or idioms,the translator should ensure the fidelity to the ST both in meaning and form by making equivalent rendering as much as possible.