A Report On E-C Translation Of The Education Of An Idealist:A Memoir (Excerpt)

Fueled by globalization and economic integration,the last few decades have seen the dramatic development of translation,among which biography translation has made impressive accomplishments.Biography distinctively features both fidelity and literature color,so translators must pay more attention to the historical background and the literariness of the original text in the translation.The report is based on the E-C translation of the certain part of The Education of An Idealist:A Memoir,---a biographical book,which mainly tells about Samantha Power’s rich work experience,providing critically important insights we readers should all understand as we face some of the most vexing issues of our time.In his well-known book Approaches to Translation,Peter Newmark divides texts into three types:expressive,vocative and informative texts,and accordingly proposed the semantic translation for expressive texts and communicative translation for vocative and informative texts.Given that biography is expressive and informative,so both semantic and communicative translation should be applied in a comprehensive way in translating the similar texts.In this report,the translator analyzed the problems she encountered in the translation such as retaining the original writing features and styles,and under the guidance of semantic and communicative translation,she offered certain methods including selecting words and reconstructing sentences in the hope that the translation can achieve the optimal communicative effect without any sacrifice of the faithfulness.The translator specified the meaning of certain polysemous words and culture-loaded words to accurately convey the contextual meaning in the application of semantic translation;she adopted such methods as addition and reconstruction so as to make the target text smoother and more natural when applying the communicative translation.By reviewing and summarizing the translation process,the translator hopes the report could provide references for the translation of the similar text.