Techniques Of Descriptive Discourse Representation In Translation Of Children’s Fantasy Works

This report is based on the translation of the excerpt from Keeper of the Lost Cities,a children’s fantasy novel with vivid,concise and lively language,interlocking plots,and imagination.The descriptive discourse epitomizes the unique charm of the language of this children’s fantasy novel,which should be analyzed and handled properly.Before starting the translation process,the descriptive discourse of the children’s fantasy novel should be analyzed comprehensively.The qualities of the descriptive discourse in the source text can be classified into five types.The characters of the novel have their traits and personalities,so the appearance description is delivered in the diction of various styles and manners;the psychological description is used to supplement some information and suggest the clues hidden in the context;the behavior(action)descriptions are flexible and entertaining,containing fantasy elements;when there are twisting plots or emergencies,the scene description comes with vividness and intricacy;and various scenery descriptions,either bizarre or beautiful,are often presented to provoke the readers’ imagination.The qualities embedded in the descriptive discourse constitute the rich aesthetic value of the work.In the translation process,it is difficult to convey the beauty and charm of the original literary work.In translating Keeper of the Lost Cities excerpts into Chinese,certain strategies should be adopted for the handling of different categories of descriptions to reproduce the qualities of the descriptive discourse and preserve the aesthetic values of the original: for the sketch-styled description,the translator retains the language style of the context in the original and imitate the source text under the principle of ensuring fidelity and fluency;and for the empathetic description,the translator enhances the aesthetic emotions of the source text through various rhetorical techniques in the target language.To be more specific,according to the objects of the descriptive discourse,the descriptions of five categories are handled in respective ways: when facing the appearance description of the characters,the emotional colorings of the key words need be properly handled and the information in the source text needs to be fully and effectively transferred to reconstruct the images of the characters in the original;for the psychological description of roles,the covert contextual information in the original should be made overt to suit Chinese children’s receptivity to reading due to the significant differences in contextual adaptability between Chinese and English;when handling the behavior(action)description,to complete the replication of the details in depth is essential,so amplification is practiced to turn the English descriptions with abstractness into those in Chinese with vividness;for the description of a tense scene,linguistic rhythmicality needs to be properly reconstructed to highlight the tense atmosphere of the source text;and for the landscape description,as English presents objective objects(landscape)in very concise words while empathy is highly pursued in Chinese,objective presentation of the Chinese version should be appropriately integrated with the expressions of general aesthetic emotions to ensure the aesthetic preferences and habits of Chinese children as targeted readers are attended to.Only by assessing the qualities of the description discourse in this children’s fantasy novel,adopting proper translation strategies and corresponding translation techniques,and applying them in a resilient way in the exact process of translation can the aesthetic values of the descriptive discourse be represented to the greatest extent.