A Report On The E-C Translation Of Shutdown:How Covid Shook The World’s Economy(Excerpts) From The Perspective Of Relevance Translation Theory

This report is on the English-Chinese translation of Chapters 7 and 8 of the book Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy written by Adam Tooze.The publisher of the book is Allen Lane and the publication date is 2021.This book provides some fresh insights on the COVID-19 pandemic and enables a wider public audience to understand the impact of the pandemic on a global scale.The features of the source text are as follows.At the lexical level,there are many terminologies,abbreviations,and pronouns,which may hinder readers’ further comprehension.At the syntactic level,there are long and complex sentences and many passive voice sentences.At the textual level,each meaning group has a corresponding logical relationship in a particular context,in which the semantics is implicit.And as this text is a typical economic text with strong speculation,its language is rigorous,professional,and logical.This translation task is carried out independently by the translator,with a translation of approximately 13,000 words.The translator chooses the Relevance Translation Theory as a guide through the linguistic characteristics of the original text and regards the translation activity as an ostensive-inferential process.The translator uses suitable translation strategies to resolve difficulties in translation in accordance with the principle of optimal relevance.The translator mainly adopts three translation strategies in this translation practice,which are addition,conversion,and omission.To be specific,the addition includes footnotes,specification,amplification,supplementation,addition of logical connectives,semantic words,and four-character words translation.The conversion includes segmentation,reconstruction,and passive voice to active voice.And the omission translation method is mainly applied to the treatment of pronoun translation.The translator hopes to achieve the following translation effects through the above translation strategies:(1)reasonably and clearly inferring the original author’s intention;(2)correctly considering readers’ cognitive context and adapting to their cognitive expectations;(3)making the readers spend the least effort to get the optimal relevance.Through this translation practice,the translator finds that the Relevance Translation Theory can guide this translation practice at the lexical,syntactic,and textual levels,and has positive guiding significance for the translation of economic texts.