| The Report of the 18 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the concept of the Community with a Shared Future for Mankind in its entirety for the first time,emphasizing the need to achieve good interaction and peaceful development with all countries in the world based on China’s reality.The concept involves the evolution of reality and the transmission and advancement of global history.As a result,familiarity with world history is conducive to the construction of the community.As a bridge for communication and learning of world history,the translation of historical texts can contribute to the construction of this community.The text of this translation practice is chosen from The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,which is the narrative of slavery in the United States and its impact on the development of American capitalism.The book centers around themes related to American history thus can be classified as an informative text due to its unique textual and writing characteristics,which are marked by professionalism and objectivity.Proper nouns,terminologies and nominalized structures are more commonly seen in lexis;more prolonged and complex sentences and passive voices appear in syntax;and the coherence and cohesive logics are more emphasized in discourse.These three levels’ text qualities present unique obstacles and challenges for translator.The Functional Equivalence Theory,proposed by American scholar Eugene Nida,is oriented to the feelings of the target readers,and believes that the translation should maximize the same reading response of the readers of the source language and the target language.The theory emphasizes the reproduction of the information in the source language and requires the translation correctly convey the linguistic and connotative information of the source language and highlight the communicative function of the target language.As an informative text,the source text is to convey the information stated by the original author.In its translation a full consideration should be given to the objectivity of information,the logic of interpretation and the acceptability of readers to achieve the communicative purpose.Thus Functional Equivalence Theory is applied here to analyze the difficulties encountered in the translation from lexical,syntactical and discourse levels and the appropriate translation strategies are employed to address the challenges.Five chapters are contained in the report.Chapter one introduces the project background,source text content and the author;chapter two summarizes the three steps of translation,including the pre-translation,the in-translation and post-translation modification.Chapter three is an introduction to Functional Equivalence Theory.Chapter four explores the application of Functional Equivalence Theory in translation at lexical,syntactical and textual levels.Chapter five is the summary with the major findings.In the practice of translating source text from English to Chinese,the translator should reasonably utilize translation techniques to achieve functional equivalence.Specific strategies such as conversing the part of speech,using four-character idioms,adding in-text annotations,adjusting the word order,restructuring sentences and restoring pronouns and subjects can be employed to address lexical,syntactic and discourse-related issues.By applying these skills,the translator strives to improve translation quality,and hopes to provide some reference for future studies of historical texts. |
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