A Report On The Translation Of Explorations In Empirical Translation Process Research (Chapter 1)

This translation report takes the first chapter,“Editing Actions: A Missing Link Between Translation Process Research and Machine Translation Research” of Explorations in Empirical Translation Process Research as the source text,and presents a discussion of translation strategies and methods guided by Reiss’ text typology theory.The selected chapter is written by Prof.Félix do Carmo and contains 14,725 words in total.This chapter presents a discussion,on theoretical and methodological grounds,of the subject of editing as a bridge between Translation Process Research(TPR)and Machine Translation(MT).It shows some of the difficulties in clarifying the results obtained by TPR data collection methods,and it discusses how edit distances can help provide better explanation.The chapter also analyzes the limitations of perspectives on editing from MT research.Ways to complement these perspectives with process data are suggested.The last part of the chapter extends the discussion to approach questions that are related to the advantages of common research between TPR and MT,and to the significance of the common understanding of the intricacy of translation.As of the time of the selection of this translation project,no Chinese translation of this book has been found.The writer chose the first chapter of the book for translation,aiming to promote people’s understanding of the role of editing in translation process research and machine translation research,and provide some reference for the translation of relevant academic works.The chosen source text is featured with many linguistic and stylistic characteristics which are typical in academic writing,such as long and complex sentences,terminology,and passive sentences.These features cause difficulties or obstacles to various degree to the translator.According to Katharina Reiss’ text typology theory,the characteristics of the source text decides that this academic paper belongs to the Informative Text Type,and the author adopted the “plain prose” strategy and translation methods like embedding,cutting,recasting,and conversion to achieve equivalence with the source text in an explicit and plain way.This report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter introduces the background,objectives,significance of the translation project,and the layout of the translation report.The second chapter mainly introduces the author,the basic information and characteristics of the original text,as well as some problems and difficulties encountered in the process of translation.The third chapter is the theoretical guidance,including the introduction of Katrina Reiss’ text typology theory,the key points of the theory,and its application in the translation project.The fourth chapter focus on the translation of long and complex sentences,and the translation of passive sentences under the guidance of the “plain prose” translation strategy of the informative text type.The last chapter will present the summary of the translation task,the theoretical reflections on the translation,and the limitations and future prospects.