A Report On E-C Translation Of "Getting The Words Out"

John Updike is one of the most famous contemporary American literary masters,whose popularity began to soar with his exquisite craftsmanship and unique prose style and known as a “Stylist”.The source text of the translation project is selected from Chapter 3,namely “Getting the Words Out”,of Updike’s autobiography Self-Consciousness: Memoirs.The Self-Consciousness: Memoirs,published in 1989,describes his reflections on his first half of life,“ to give the mundane its beautiful due”.The third chapter “Getting the Words Out” mainly describes how Updike overcame the obstacle in vocal apparatus caused by his slight congenital stuttering and how he turned the disadvantage into advantage in expressing himself as a writer particularly.The translation of the source text provides some reference for the study of Updike’s life experiences and the application of the autobiographical elements in his works.Due to the differences in language,culture and thinking patterns,a certain degree of the loss in semantics,syntax,cultural connotation and aesthetic elements is inevitable in the process of translation.Therefore,it is necessary for the translator to adopt corresponding strategies for compensation.“Getting the Words Out” is basically a literary text and features long and complex sentence patterns,as well as characteristics of stream of consciousness loaded with a lot of cultural information.Based on the previous research of translation compensation theory,the translator explores how to use compensation strategies to make up for translation loss: at the semantic level,extension,amplification and specification are applied to compensate for the loss of meaning;for translation loss at the syntactic level,compensation means such as conversion of subject,word order adjustment and division are mainly adopted for idiomatic expression;at the cultural level,the translator employs paraphrase and annotation to compensate for the loss of cultural information;while at the aesthetic level,the domestication strategy of four-character expressions is taken to avoid losing aesthetic elements.Under the guidance of translation compensation theory,the translator should choose the smoothest expression in the target language,and try to reproduce the style and artistic appeal of the original text as much as possible,and provide reference for solving difficulties in the translation of similar literary texts,so as to promote the international communication of literature.