The Transfer Of Recursive Structure In The Translation Of Documentary Texts

The translation report is based on the introduction and chapter one of Orphaned Landscapes: Violence,Visuality,and Appearance in Indonesia by Patricia Spyer,a cultural anthropologist at the Geneva Institute.In this text,Spyer explores the relationship between images and the violence by depicting the changes that occurred in the urban streetscape after the outbreak of the religious conflict and the domestic violence,in relation to what she saw,heard,and felt in Ambon,Indonesia.She uses recursive structures to depict those changes,rendering the tense atmosphere during the conflict.As a typical documentary text,the text is well documented and vividly worded.The detail and vividness of the text are attached to these recursive structures,and the sentence structure is nested with many modifying elements.Therefore,in this report,the translator focuses on how to transfer these structures in the text,and explore how to decode the recursive structure so that readers can better understand the meaning expressed by the author.In this report,recursion in the text are divided into two major categories: linear recursion and embedded recursion.Among them,linear recursion is mainly divided into parataxis recursion and hypotaxis recursion,while embedded recursion is divided into phrase-embedded word and sentence-embedded word.In order to present the hidden relationship between all those information in recursive structures and make the translation more readable,the translator mainly deals with the recursion based on the principle of coherence through methods including reversed translation,division and embedding translation.Through translation,the translator has gained a better understanding of the characteristics of the recursion in documentary texts.At the same time,the translator also summarized the translation methods to deal with recursive structure.The translator also reflects on the shortcomings and problems that arise in practice,hoping to provide some reference for translators who translate documentary texts.