A Report On E-C Translation Of Calamity Theory:Three Critiques Of Existential Risk(Excerpts)

Over the recent years,climate change,aggravating desertification,shrinking biodiversity,and some other frequent extreme environment events have posed serious challenges to human survival and development.As such,the study of “existential risk” has attracted attention in the international academia,while domestic research in this field is still in its infancy.Hence,this translation practice is significant to some sense.The source text is excerpted from Introduction and Chapter One of Calamity Theory: Three Critiques of Existential Risk,published by University of Minnesota Press in 2021 and co-authored by Derek Woods,an assistant professor of Literature at the University of British Columbia and Joshua Schuster,an associate professor of Arts and Humanities at Western University.There is no Chinese version currently.This book displays a critical analysis of the growing philosophical concept of existential risk,mainly on its origin and evolution,pointing out that some species and communities face greater existential risks and trying to probe into human extinction.This translation practice report aims to explore how Peter Newmark’s translation theory contributes to addressing the difficulties in translation of the source text.Through the analysis of its content and style and guided by Newmark’s theory,the translator identifies the text type of the source text and takes communicative translation as the main approach and semantic translation as the auxiliary one.Meanwhile,the analysis of specific cases is conducted from three levels,namely lexis,syntax and text.At the lexical level,the translator adopts literal translation,free translation and shift to deal with the translation of terms,slang and abstract nouns.At the syntactic level,she employs a mix of translation skills,such as addition,negation and division,to address simple sentences and long complex sentences.At the textual level,the translator focuses on whether the translation is cohesive and coherent.Finally,the translator presents her gains and reflections in this practice and finds that the combined use of Newmark’s communicative and semantic translation approaches are conducive to the translation of informative texts with some expressive and vocative function.Through the translation and this report,the translator hopes to introduce the research of existential risk to domestic academia,appeal for people’s attention in this regard and provide reference for those who embark on similar translation practice.