A Report On E-C Translation Of Biography Chicago: A Biography (Excerpts)

This translation report is based on the E-C translation of the book Chicago: A Biography,written by American author Dominic A.Pacyga.Chapters 7 and 8 of this book were selected as the source text for the translation practice.With abundant archival documents and news,the two chapters show the significant role which the automobile played in Chicago’s economic development,and the social unrest after the Great Depression,presenting readers with a vivid history of Chicago.The source text contains a large number of proper nouns,cultural-specific items,slogans,direct speeches and indirect speeches etc.,thus the translator adopts Christiane Nord’s Documentary Translation,supplemented with Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Thick Translation,to guide the translation practice.Documentary Translation can focus on any of the features at all levels of the source text,placing the text in a rich cultural-linguistic context and pushing target readers into the background,which is precisely applicable to biography translation.In this report,the translator discusses how Documentary Translation can be applied in translation practice from the lexical,syntactic and rhetorical aspects.Besides,the translator uses translation methods and techniques such as amplification,annotation and explicitation to compensate for the deficiencies of Documentary Translation,retaining the cultural features of the source text,enhancing the readability of the translated text and meeting the reading expectations of the target readers.Through the translation practice,the translator can deeply understand the linguistic characteristics of biographical texts,and figure out the appropriate translation methods and techniques in translating biographical texts,so as to provide references for future research in this field from a novel and distinctive perspective.