A Report On E-C Translation Of Climate Change Analysis In The Investment Process(Excerpt)

The source text is excerpted from part I Executive Summary and Part II body Report of “Climate Change Analysis in The Investment Process”.The main content of the excerpt introduces the causes and effects of climate change and their impact on investment,providing references for target readers to make investment decisions.Through text analysis,the characteristics of the original text has been summarized namely,accuracy,simplicity and clarity.Accuracy in the source text is reflected by the accurate use of grammar,such as passive voice and complex sentences,which is aim to ensure the objectiveness and correctness of statements.Simplicity in the source text is reflected by conciseness and ways of wording,as well as the change of sentences from complexity to simplicity.Clarity in the source text is reflected by the concept definition which is complete and clear with the help of pictures,tables and other means to make the information easy to understand;meanwhile,the overall content is well-knitted by the use of subtitles,making the text expression from simplicity to clarity.Therefore,to reproduce the above characteristics in the translation becomes the focus and difficulty of this translation task.With the above questions in mind,the translator searched relevant literature on report translation,among which Nida’s Functional Equivalence is mostly applied in translation practice to guide the translation on how to reproduce the textual characteristics of the source text.Functional equivalence holds that “the adequacy of translation has been judged on the basis of the correspondences in formal and grammar between the source language and target language,and the correspondences are usually stated as ‘equivalence’”.To achieve such equivalence,Nida thought,following principle of translation should be followed: finding the differences between the source language and the target language and introducing some adjustments into the target text,the greater the differences,the more adjustments.To reproduce the Accuracy,shift can be adopted to translate complex sentences and passive voice;to reproduce Simplicity,division can be adopted to translate sentences with nonfinite verbs;to reproduce Clarity,liberal translation is adopted to translate graphs,tables and subtitles.