A Report On E-C Translation Of Irreplaceable:The Fight To Save Our Wild Places (Chapter Two)

Changes in the ecological environment have currently given rise to a special type of ecological biographies,which vividly present the changes and development of natural ecology through the rendering and setting of characters and stories.Although this type of biography is limited in readership to some extent and is not well researched in translation,there are many benefits to translate and convey the moving stories and emotions of people and nature in ecological biographies.This report is based on the translation project in which the second chapter of Julian Hoffman’s Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places was selected as the source text.The translator uses the strategy of explicitation to analyze the text in detail at the lexical,syntactical,textual and rhetorical levels,summarizing the problems encountered in translation practice,and discusses the corresponding specific translation methods and techniques in conjunction with explicitation.At the lexical level,the source text contains many ecological or forestry-related words,words with cultural characteristics and proper nouns.At the syntactical level,many of the sentences in the source text are complex and have a specific deep implication.At the textual level,the paragraphs in the source text are long and not clear in cohesion and coherence.At the rhetorical level,the source text has the artistic quality of prose.Therefore,the translator adopts translation techniques such as addition of notes and shift to achieve clarity at the lexical level,translation techniques such as division and extension to achieve clarity at the syntactical level,translation techniques such as adding conjunctions and repetition to achieve clarity at the textual level,and translation methods such as literal translation and free translation to achieve clarity at the rhetorical level.It is found that by using the translation strategy of explicitation and the translation methods and techniques for explicitation,the translation can be clearer,more explicit and more comprehensible.This report offers new ideas for the translation of this type of text,the discovery of new means as well as the identification of translation shortcomings,with a view to providing some lessons for the study of the strategy and the translation of such texts.