The Application Of Communicative Translation Theory In The Translation Of Sinclair Lewis’s Go East, Young Man

Sinclair Lewis is the first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in America. He enjoys great reputation in the literary world for his talent of describing the disadvantages and the bad habits of western country-life. Lewis’s brilliant achievements in the1920s had a huge influence on literature. In China, only six of his22novels have Chinese versions, and a large number of his other novels have not yet been translated. Therefore, in order to spread Lewis’s thought and literary achievements to China, it is necessary for Chinese translators to complete the translation of his other works.Go East, Young Man (1930) is selected from the short story collection of Sinclair Lewis named Go East, Young Man on Class in America (2005), which is edited by Sally E. Parry. By narrating a young man’s experience, this novel described thoroughly the businessmen’s pursuit of art during the1930s when commercial culture was flourishing in America.This paper is composed of the text of Go East, Young Man, the Chinese translation of it and the analysis of this translation. Before translating the text, the author makes some preparations, knowing about Sinclair Lewis and his writing style, finding related materials of this novel and preparing necessary translation tools. The characteristics of communicative translation theory greatly conform to the needs of novel translation, because it combines the advantages of adaption, free translation and idiomatic translation, and emphasizes that the target language readers should have the same experience with source-language readers, which is pursued by literary translators. Consequently, the author decides to adopt communicative translation theory to guide this translation practice and choose appropriate translation methods.In the process of translation, the author mainly discusses the guiding role of communicative translation theory at lexical and syntactical levels, and gives detailed analysis of cases at the same time. The analysis at lexical level includes three aspects. The first aspect emphasizes the translation of the title by choosing the correct meaning of the word in order to avoid misunderstanding. The second aspect puts emphasis on the translation of names, for example, keeping the conformity of the translation of different names of the same character. The third aspect elaborates the application of Chinese four-word phrases, which is a unique feature in Chinese, and the application of four-word phrases will effectively avert redundancy and make the version concise and readable. And the analysis at syntactical level contains two parts. One focuses on the translation of dialogues, the version of which shall reach the best communicative effect. The other part lays stress on the translation of descriptive sentences, which should meet the specifications of Chinese and accurately convey the meaning of the original text. At the end of the practice, the author seriously reviews the version for several times to make sure the consistency of names, the proper use of punctuation as well as the fluency of the version. It is hoped that this study could provide some insights and enlightenments for literary translators so as to make readers enjoy more excellent translations of Lewis’s other novels.