A Report On Chinese-English Translation Of A Biography Of Lu Yao(Excerpt)

Translation is a bridge for cultural exchanges between different countries.Under the context of Chinese culture “going global”,the translation of excellent literary works is crucial to the dissemination of Chinese culture.A Biography of Lu Yao is a biographical literary work that integrates the history,and the personal experience and literary spirit of the famous writer Lu Yao.The translation of such literary works is of great significance for the spread of Chinese classics to the outside world,the promotion of the construction of China into a country with advanced culture and the enhancement of the cultural soft power of China.The fifth chapter of A Biography of Lu Yao is the translation object of this report.This chapter is with both literary and academic features,and rich historical facts involving in this work.In order to get better communication effect,its English version should be as close to the source text as possible.Thus,the completion of the entire translation task is guided by the correlative approach to translation of Peter Newmark.Under the guidance of this translation theory,the key and difficult points encountered during the translation practice are analyzed from the aspects of lexical closeness,grammatical closeness and textual closeness.At the lexical closeness level,key and difficult points are the translation of the abbreviations,dialects,proper names,and the identities of the characters in the book;at the grammatical closeness level,key and difficult points mainly involve the translation of run-on sentences and topic-prominent sentences;and at the textual closeness level,key and difficult points conclude the grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion of the text.To solve the above-mentioned translation difficulties,through case studies,the corresponding translation methods and techniques are put forward under the guidance of the correlative approach to translation.At the lexical closeness level,literal translation,amplification,liberal translation and annotation,can be flexibly adopted to achieve the maximum degree of closeness;at the grammatical closeness level,literal translation,division,restructuring,amplification,the change of voices,combination,paraphrase and omission,can be selected to achieve the maximum degree of closeness;at the textual closeness level,amplification,the change of voices,literal translation,replacement and omission,can be utilized to achieve the maximum degree of closeness.In a word,it is found that choosing the corresponding translation methods and techniques under the guidance of the close translation of the correlative approach to translation is helpful to improve the quality of biographical literature translation,and promote readers to understand the content of the book and fully learn the protagonist.