A Report On The C-E Translation Of "Engine Control System Of XX Automobile Maintenance Manual" (Excerpt) Based On Text Type Theory

An automobile maintenance manual refers to a handbook issued by the manufacturer that contains instructions and guidance for the maintenance of a specific vehicle.With the handy book,users can learn about vehicle performance and maintenance method.However,the translation of such text is not received enough attention,since many translators lack necessary knowledge and theoretical guidance,and blindly pursue the faithfulness of translation,which results in many translation errors.Given this,it is of great importance to reproduce well-translated maintenance manuals and product specifications.The source text“XX Automobile Maintenance Manual” used in this paper comes from the automobile company where the translator had her internship,and the translator chooses the part of engine control system as the translation object.This paper analyzes the typical examples in the material based on Reiss’ text type theory.Automobile maintenance manuals belong to technical texts,and their main task is to disseminate information and knowledge,which is very rigorous and standardized in writing.After obtaining the translation materials,the translator immediately analyzes the text types.According to Reiss’ classification of the text types,the translation materials are mainly informational texts,supplemented by operative and expressive texts.Therefore,this paper particularly highlights the informative function to ensure the accuracy and faithfulness of the translation,and considers the operative and the expressive function to realize different functions of the text at the same time.Informative text focuses on the accurate transfer of content,and plain language should be used to accurately and completely reproduce the original content during translation.This paper adopts different translation strategies from the aspects of vocabulary,sentence and discourse to realize the informative function.First of all,the translation of terminology must be ensured to conforms to the standard expression of automobile industry.This could be achieved by means of word meaning transformation and supplementing missing information.Secondly,the fluency and objectivity of sentence translation should not be underestimated.Sentence fluency could be achieved by splitting long sentences and removing redundant information.At the same time,technical texts are objective,so it is essential to convert the active voice into the passive voice.At last,due to the difference of thinking patterns between Chinese and English,grammatical cohesion means such as substitution and conjunction must be used to improve the logical coherence of the text.Operative text focuses on appeals and makes the readers to a certain response.Readers’ emotional response could be aroused by expressing imperative sentences literally and describing states as action instructions,so as to achieve the operative function.Expressive text pays attention to the aesthetic form of the original text.This paper mainly reproduces the formal features of the original text by using parallel structure and retaining the original form.This paper confirms the guiding role of text type theory in translating technical texts to a certain extent.However,because of the limited experience and translation materials,some translation methods proposed are only applicable to this translation project and still need to be further strengthened in future translation practice.