Analysis Of The English-to-chinese Translation Of The Autobiography Finding Me (Experts):Approach To Translation As Adaptation And Selection

Finding Me is a memoir of Viola Davis,a well-known American actor.The book tells a story about herself.Even though she suffered from racism and went through misfortune brought by her original family,she got rid of others’ prejudice and became successful step by step.By translating this autobiography,the translator hopes to introduce the outstanding autobiography into China and inspire more people to find their true selves and the meaning of life when they are stuck in predicament and confusion.According to the textual features of this book,the translator takes an ecological approach proposed by Hu Gengshen to solve the translational problems,which sees translation as a process of adaptation and selection.The chosen chapters are the first and second chapters of the book.Under the guidance of this theory,the translator attempts to summarize the translation strategies fit for autobiography translation in the linguistic,cultural and communicative dimension.In the linguistic dimension,the translator adopts translation strategies of using Chinese four-character phrases,long sentence division and part of speech conversion to ensure the target text’s conformity to the expression habits of the target readers by transforming the linguistic style and structure and retaining the meaning of the original text;in the cultural dimension,the translator adopts translation strategies of paraphrase and extra-textual annotation to minimize mismatch caused by cultural differences,helping target readers understand the cultural connotation of the original text;in the communicative dimension,the translator adopts translation strategies of extension,amplification and negation to achieve the communicative intention to make the target text understood and accepted easier by target readers to secure sound a communicative effect.The translation practice report proves that the ecological approach to translation proposed by Hu Gengshen can effectively informs the English-to-Chinese translation of autobiography.Hopefully,it might also provide some reference for the translation of autobiographical literature.