A Report On E-c Translation Of Character Descriptions From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory

Along with the flourishing of global culture,foreign literary works always play an important role in cultural communication,and the translation of which has always been attached great importance to,as it is an indispensable bridge between different languages and cultures.Besides,the creation of images is the soul of fiction.As fiction attaches priority to portraying characters,then how to translate character descriptions becomes a worthwhile issue.On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,a fiction published in 2019,is written by the Asian-American writer Ocean Vuong.In the form of a letter to his mother,this fiction recalls his daily life with his mother and grandma when he was a little boy,and presents readers the life experience of growing up in an Asian family in the American settings from the perspective of immigrants.Through a large number of character descriptions,the writer vividly describes the images of his mother and grandma in details.The plain and emotional language of the fiction is full of philosophy.On the basis of carefully studying the source text,the author selected several chapters(more than 10 thousand words in total)of the fiction as translation practice materials and mainly focused on the translation of character descriptions.In the translation process,from the perspective of the functional equivalence theory,the author classified the character descriptions in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous into three categories: portrait description,dialogue description and action description.This report focuses on finding out the most applicable and feasible translation methods for translating descriptions of portraits,dialogues and actions.Basing on the analysis of typical examples,the author sums up her major findings in translating some chapters of this fiction.Firstly,when dealing with the translation of portrait descriptions,the addition and free translation methods are frequently applied to depicting the characters graphically and accurately conveying the characters’ inner feelings.Secondly,the literal translation is more suitable for translating dialogues to faithfully reflect the simplicity of characters’ dialogues.Thirdly,the author finds that adaptation is most helpful for translating actions by transforming English verbs into rich Chinese expressions.