A Report On The E-C Translation Of The Excerpts From The Problem Of Alzheimer’s:How Science,Culture,and Politics Turned A Rare Disease Into A Crisis And What We Can Do About It

Alzheimer’s disease(AD)is a chronic,progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by a variety of factors.The high prevalence of AD involves a wide range of people.As China enters the stage of population aging,the number of people potentially affected by AD is very large.However,there is still a big gap between China and developed countries in the early screening,early diagnosis,early treatment and whole course management of AD.Therefore,the dissemination of AD knowledge has practical significance.Part 2(chapter 8 to chapter 13)of Jason Karlawish’s book The Problem of Alzheimer’s: How Science,Culture,and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It was selected as the source text for the present translation practice.According to the linguistic features of the source medical text,and guided by Catford’s category shifts theory,three strategies were adopted: class shifts,unit shifts and structure shifts.Class shifts were mainly the shifts of vocabulary,such as the shifts of nouns and verbs,prepositions and verbs,and adjectives and verbs with the purpose to make sentences more fluent.Unit shifts were chiefly the shifts of words and phrases,phrases and simple sentences,and subordinate clauses and sentences,with the objective to make the sentences logically clear.Structure shifts were mainly the shifts from passive sentences to active sentences,subject-prominent sentences to topic-prominent sentences,impersonal subject sentences to personal subject sentences,and negative sentences to positive sentences,with the aim to make the Chinese version more in line with Chinese expression habits.It is hoped that this translation practice would,to a certain extent,help to popularize AD knowledge,to call more attention to AD patients and also to provide reference for the translation of similar texts.