A C-E Translation Report On The Huawei Way (Excerpts):Difficulties In Translating Metaphors And Coping Tactics

This report is based on the Chinese-English translation practice of the recommendation preface,author’s preface,Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of The Huawei Way.The author of the book is Wu Jianguo,former Vice President of Human Resource of Huawei,and builder of Huawei’s talent system.In the book,the author reveals the core points of Huawei’s team construction and talent management.The source text is practical and professional,and contains many professional words.Many metaphors are used to make the language more vivid,which is easy to arouse the interests of readers.The primary concern during the translation is the difficulties in translating metaphors.The major difficulties are categorized as follows:(1)metaphors with cultural image differences;(2)metaphors with cultural image vacancy.Adaptation theory was put forward by Verschueren in Understanding Pragmatics.According to Verschueren,the process of language use is the process of making choices continuously.As a language communication activity,the process of translation is also a process of continuous making of choices.The choices of translation are to adapt to multi-level and multi-dimensional translation purposes.Under the guidance of Verschueren’s adaptation theory,in order to solve the difficulties in translating metaphors with cultural image differences,the coping tactics are put forward as follows:(1)conversion of metaphors into similes;(2)conversion of metaphors into similes plus sense;(3)replacement of source language images with target language images.In order to solve the difficulties in translating metaphors with cultural image vacancy,the coping tactics are put forward as follows:(1)conversion of metaphors into sense;(2)combination of metaphors with sense;(3)literal translation of images plus annotation.Practices show that the above methods can effectively solve the translation difficulties of this translation project and provide useful guidance and reference for metaphor translation,so as to enrich metaphor translation strategies and help to improve the quality of translation.Besides,practically,the good translation of enterprise publicity materials is beneficial to the overseas market expansion of the enterprise and the establishment of a good international image.