Dashes In Fiction Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence

Numerous studies on English-Chinese translation of fiction have been carried out,but few of them focus on dealing with punctuation marks,a necessary tool for writers to complete their stories.This report is based on the translation of "The Orphanage" and"Who Has Seen the Wind?",two English short stories written by Carson McCullers.The former is about how a girl’s horrible memory of childhood was cleared,and the latter describes how a depressed writer once succeeded but soon failed in his career and marriage.The frequent use of dashes in the source texts is a challenge to the translator.The functional differences between dashes in the two languages forbid translators to simply transfer all the English dashes directly into the Chinese ones.To solve this problem,the translator has analyzed examples from the source text and presented the conclusions in an effective way so that other translators can take them as a reference in their future translation practice.Guided by the Functional Equivalence Theory,this report recommends that translators firstly ascertain the function of the original dashes and see if Chinese dashes can be applied as their equivalents.On the one hand,when a dash is used to mark causal relationships or shifts in thoughts,and add details with emphasis to the sentence,indicating modification made by the speaker or show interruptions in speaking,it can be directly transferred into a Chinese dash because it has similar functions,but sometimes certain repetition of key words or additional words is needed to ensure fluency.On the other hand,because of the inequality of functions,English dashes simply adding amplifications to sentences,introducing lists,showing hesitations in diction,describing omissions in speaking,or appearing in pairs to mark appositives or parentheses are recommended to be transferred into other Chinese punctuation marks.Through completing the translation of the two short stories,this report may also make some contribution to the domestic studies on Carson McCullers,and provide a new perspective,via McCullers’s writing preference for dashes,to future researchers.