A Study On Strategies Of African American Vernacular English Translation

Nowadays, as the growth of the range and depth of globalization, culturalintegration became increasingly evident. African-American Culture and AfricanAmerican Vernacular English has gradually attracted more people’s attention in recentyears. As a special kind of dialect, African American Vernacular English possessescomplex social and cultural functions. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written byAmerican writer Mark Twain is the most representative work of using AfricanAmerican Vernacular English, it occupied immortal place in the history of Americanliterature. However, owing to syntax differences between African AmericanVernacular English and Standard English in phonetics, vocabulary, sentence structureand other aspects, besides, scholars are still stuck at the exploratory stage on the studyof its translation principles and methods, translation works are quite different withdiversity of translation methods and principles, thus literary critics domestic andoverseas gave contradictory comments. Under this circumstances,it is necessary toconduct further discussion and research on African American Vernacular Englishtranslation.Translation involves conversing two languages with different cultural contextto realize the integration and communication. A good translation work can not onlybring out the “form” of the original, but also reflect the “spirit”. With the guidance oftranslatology, linguistics and relevant theories, the ways of description, summary andcomparison were used to study the African American Vernacular English translationstrategies. The origin and definition of African American Vernacular English, thestatus quo of dialect and African American Vernacular English translation weresumarized and it also pointed out the translation plight of African AmericanVernacular English. Zhang Wanli and Cheng Shi have translated The Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn into two different versions. The principles they followed andmethods they used in African American Vernacular English translation were widelydivergent, so the two works have their own prominent feature and shortcomings thatcan not be ignored and provided a specific example of African American VernacularEnglish translation. The comparative study and analysis were conducted on those twoworks from different theoretical perspectives, the importance of theoretical guidancewas demonstrated, the advantages and disadvantages of those two works under theoretical rules.On the basis of comparison and analysis of those two versions, the thesis raisesfive principles of African American Vernacular English translation, which should alsofollow the basic translation principles.They are principle of reproducing,the functionof African American Vernacular English; principle of foreignization rather thandomestication; principle of reproducing the language aesthetic effects of AfricanAmerican Vernacular English; principle of overall coordination; principle ofrespecting the culture of African Americans. At the same time, based on theadvantages of those two versions and previous methods, the author concludes suchtranslation Strategies of African American Vernacular English as standard colloquiallanguage method; equivalent dialect blending translation; ma lapropism method;syntax variation routinization method; semantic regeneration and annotation method.It finally concludes that each method or strategy of translation has its merits anddemerits, so in the course of translating African American Vernacular Englishtranslators should use them properly and complementarily to target different situationsso as to achieve the best effect of translation.