A Translation Report On The Secrets To Happiness At Work (Excerpt)

This is an English-Chinese translation practice report based on the six chapters from The Secrets to Happiness at Work,a guide book written by American sociologist Tracy Brower.The book offers some detailed information to help wage earners achieve self-growth and gain more happiness in workplace.It is characterized by concise and appealing language,along with a logical and clear structure.Given the characteristics of the source text,the translation purpose is to accurately and smoothly conveying the information of the original text and reserving the language style of the source text as much as possible.Thus,the Adaptation Theory put forward by Jef Verschueren is used as a theoretical framework for guiding the translation project.The translator is not constrained by a single standard,with some subjectivity to flexibly adapt to language context and structure so as to achieve the communicative goal.In this report,certain typical cases are selected for analysis from the lexical level,syntactic level and discourse level to illustrate how the translator flexibly utilizes different translation methods to solve the problems in contextual and structural adaptation during the translation process.The translator sums up some experience from the report.Firstly,the translator cannot ignore the limitations of linguistic context on the meaning and use of words,and should flexibly address the problems associated with contextual adaptation to ensure the accurate and appropriate expression of the source text.Secondly,due to the disparities between Chinese and English,the translator needs to adapt to Chinese structure and expression habits,thus rendering a better reading experience to target readers.Thirdly,the translator should be aware of cultural differences.It is hoped that this translation report can provide some reference for the translation of similar texts.