A Report On The E-C Translation Practice Of Eyewitness:Building(Chapters 1-15)

The source text of this translation practice is excerpted from Eyewitness: Building by British writer Philip Wilkinson.The book was published by UK Dorling Kindersley Ltd.Wilkinson describes the buildings’ definition,building materials and construction technology in a simple and easy way,which fully reflects roles of buildings in life,its relationship with human beings and its value for the society.Chapters 1-15 which are well illustrated,specialized in language content,are the source material of this report,involving a large number of terms,passive voice and dashes.In this translation process,the precise transmission of terms,the fluent expression of sentences,the cohesive processing of dashes and the aesthetic reflections of translation constitute the major difficulties.The translator employs “keyword + image” combined search method and Google advanced grammar to search and verify terms,ensuring the professionalism and accuracy of them.To ensure the fluency of sentences,the translator uses Chinese active sentences,subject-free sentences and lexical means to convert many English passive sentences.Taking the high frequency dashes into consideration,the transplantation method and conversion method are used to reproduce the logical meaning behind the dashes.In addition,the translator adopts Chinese four-character phrases and rhetorical devices to enhance the beauty,idiomatic and readability of the translation,so as to conform to the norms of the target language and improve readers’ reading experience.This translation practice allows the translator to learn about architecture knowledge.In addition,it tells the translator some lessons.First,translating architectural texts requires combining the fidelity,accuracy of informative texts and the aesthetics of architectural texts.And in English-Chinese translation,domestication strategy should be used to deal with sentence pattern conversion in order to achieve authentic expression of the target language.Second,translators must be adept at translation retrieval,analysis,integration and reorganization,namely search quotient,and be good at using inducing words and searching grammar and other methods to quickly grasp information and improve the retrieval quality.Third,although the “human-machine” intelligent translation mode has gained popularity and can improve translation efficiency,translators should still believe in their irreplaceability,improve learning ability and take the initiative to master the “human-machine”translation process.Through this translation practice,the translator’s analytical ability has been further strengthened,her awareness of search quotient has been further enhanced,and her translation techniques and skills have been further improved.At the same time,the translator hopes that the glossary produced in the translation practice can make a modest contribution to the construction of architectural terminology database,and the summarized practical experience can provide some reference for the translation of similar texts.