A Report On The Translation Of Depression:What Everyone Needs To Know (Excerpt)

The global COVID-19 outbreak has led to a dramatic increase in the prevalence of depression,but the public knows little about its causes and treatments.Depression:What Everyone Needs to Know by Jonathan Rottenberg is a popular science book in psychology,which systematically introduces the definitions,origins,treatments and prognoses of the disorder.And the translation practice materials are the 6th,7th,11th and 12th chapters of the book:The first two chapters discuss the biological,psychological and environmental factors that may cause depression,and the last two chapters introduce the main treatments and the self-help measures for the disorder.According to Peter Newmark’s text typology theory and translation strategy,the original materials are the informative text,which has the function of calling and advocating,so the translation should apply to the communicative translation strategy.Under the guidance of this strategy,the present author focuses on the readers of the target text and ensures that the translation is not only faithful to the original text in content,but also authentic and understandable in language and fluent and natural in the style of writing.For the representative translation cases,the present author analyzes them at four levels:lexis,sentence,discourse and culture.Among them,the translation at the lexical level adopts the methods of meaning extension,amplification,class shifts and using four-character Chinese expressions,so that the lexical meaning of the translation is equivalent to that of the original,and the language is concise and condensed.Breaking the inherent form of the original text,the translation of sentences is discussed around merging and splitting,order adjustment and passive sentence processing,focusing on the essentials of the original text rather than the literal content.The translation at the discourse level is divided into cohesion and coherence and illustrates how the translation processes the cohesion means of the original text and realizes the coherence effect in the discourse to make the translation holistic.When it comes to the translation at the cultural level,it discusses how to translate the original expressions with cultural characteristics to avoid the translation being difficult to understand due to cultural differences.The translation practice can provide a little experience and some examples for the translation of psychology texts,encouraging more translators to participate in the translation of this field and make contributions to our popularization and development of psychological knowledge in the future.At the same time,this translation practice can also help Chinese readers understand the main causative factors and treatments of depression and learn self-help measures,promoting personal mental health development and contributing to social harmony and stability.