A Report On The Translation Of “Natural Hazards And National Security- The Covid-19 Lessons” From The Perspective Of Nord’s Function Plus Loyalty Principle

The source text of this translation practice is selected from PRISM(March,2021)published by Institute for National Strategic Security,National Defense University.Its author,by taking Covid-19 lessons for example,illustrates a wide range of damaging impacts of natural hazards on natural security,puts forward a “SEES” model,and appeals to governments to take precautionary measures so as to mitigate these impacts.The source text falls into the category of informative texts defined by Reiss,who holds that informative texts have the characteristics of authenticity,accuracy,formalization and communicability,and thus should be fully and faithfully translated.Considering the special identity,the different ideology and culture of the source text author from the target readers,however,the traditional fidelity-oriented approach is obviously not suitable to be a good alternative to this translation practice.Rather,the writer of this report thinks that,in the process of translation,the translator should take into consideration both the source text author’s intentions and the target receiver’s expectations,and employ a wide array of translation techniques to negotiate the differences in expression logic,culture and ideology embedded in the two different language communities concerned,so as to realize the communicative purpose and acceptability of the target text.In view of these,Nord’s function plus loyalty is adopted as the guiding theory to explore how to select appropriate translation techniques to solve the difficulties encountered at the linguistic(mainly lexical and syntactic)and cultural levels in the translation process.To be specific,at the lexical level,translation techniques like conversion,amplification,splitting,omission and repetition are employed;at the syntactic level,techniques such as division,change of voice,reconstruction and combination are used to solve the difficulties encountered in translating long and complex sentences;at the cultural level,techniques of adding quotation marks and annotations are used to handle groundless smears on China of Western scholars or politicians,due to their cultural or ideological bias.Through this translation practice,the writer of this practice report has felt deeply that Nord’s function plus loyalty principle is not only quite helpful in solving the linguistic difficulties encountered in the translation process,but also is very conducive to resolving the cultural differences,particular ideological differences.