A Report On The E-C Translation Of Off The Books(Excerpt)under The Guidance Of Complex Adaptive System

The report is based on the translation of the first two chapters of the sociological book Off the Books:The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor written by American sociologist Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh.This book deals with a variety of complex and changing social issues in American society,such as racial conflicts,underground economic systems,and the complex relationship between police,bandits,and vendors,covering fields such as economics and sociology.It focuses on the status of the underground economy of the urban poor in Chicago and answers some of the typical questions about the urban poor from an insider’s perspective.Its language style is rigorous,logical,and professional.The book also contains plenty of jargon,colloquial sentences,and cultural-loaded words commonly used by the lower class,with diversified and complex sentence patterns due to the necessity and requirement of sociological investigation.According to these features of sentence pattern,vocabulary,and language style of the source text,the present reporter chooses Complex Adaptive System theory as her guidance and tests its adaptability and application prospect during completing the translation of the source text.Complex Adaptive System theory holds that everything in the world presents a variety of complex connections.In view of the fact that translation itself is a chaos or complex system,which focuses on the organic,holistic,and dynamic nature,scholars at home and abroad take Complex Adaptive System theory to have a research of translation in the translation activities.Complex Adaptive System translation theory points out that translators should abandon simple reductionism and consider translation activities as a holistic and dynamic system,which echoes the aesthetic principle of "harmony without uniformity" in traditional Chinese culture.Both require performers in the system,i.e.,translators to deal with the differences between cultures through a flexible,organic,and dialectical perspective.In addition to "introduction" and "conclusion",the present report is made up of three parts.Through the review of the theoretical basis of Complex Adaptive System translation theory and its corresponding principles of translation aesthetics,the report mainly discusses how to apply Complex Adaptive Systems theory to guide the translation process and its practice,and how to solve the specific problems in the translation.In the analysis of specific cases,in which the report discusses how to use Complex Adaptive System translation theory to deal with the differences between two languages from the lexical,syntactic,textual and stylistic levels so as to achieve the aesthetic effect of "harmony without uniformity".During the translation practice,translation techniques,such as addition,conversion,and readjustment of word order and so on,have been taken.It is found that the aesthetic principle of "harmony without uniformity" echoes Complex Adaptive System translation theory to a certain extent.Both benefit a lot in this translation practice,which have a good application prospect in translation activities.