Analysis On English-Chinese Translation Strategies For Epistolary Texts

Letter is a type of text which has its own form and linguistic characteristics. When translating letters from English to Chinese or from Chinese to English, translators not only have to take the equivalence between the two languages into consideration, but also should select the appropriate ways based on the characteristics of the letter in translation process, in order to perform the communicative functions of the text to the greatest extent. Text typology which belongs to German Functionalist Translation Theory takes features and functions of the text as factors to affect the translation strategies and methods, such as order adjustment, amplification and omission in translation, the change of the voices and so on, and it can guide the practice of translation.Based on Text typology, this article firstly focuses on the characteristics of the epistolary text and also its requirements in translation language. And then the author will select examples from translation practice to illustrate the application of several translation strategies.