A Report On The Translation Of A Mongolian Family On The Grassland

This is a report on the translation of the novel A Mongolian Family on the Grassland. It is a Chinese edition of an original Mongolian novel written by Sharen Gaowa and its Chinese translator is Duorina. Mongolian Literature flourishes but a great number of Mongolian literary works are still unknown to outside world where Mongolian is not people’s mother tongue or not used as commonly as before. Therefore, the translation from Chinese into English aims to offer a reading material for English readers and contribute to the accessibility of Mongolian literature.Firstly, the report analyzes three levels of the source text including words, sentences and the whole text, finding that the novel is beautifully written and of great literary merit. Secondly, the translating and analyzing process is conducted under the theory of functional equivalence which is reader-oriented. For this a great deal of preparatory work is done by translator. Thirdly, the difficult part is discussed on the translation of local characteristic, habits of expression, discourse coherence, rhetoric and lyrics. Fourthly, certain translation strategies like following the original syntactic order, reinventing sentence structures and reframing discources are applied as well as translation methods like transliteration and amplification.Finally three fundamental issues are discussed like differences and similarities between translation of E-C and C-E, the relationship between literary translation and translator’s subjectivity and the importance of comprehension and expression. And a conclusion is drawn by translator that a qualified translation can be achieved by hard work on understanding the source text. A translator should improve her English expressing ability to make her translation more native and moreover, pay attention to the limitation of translator’s subjectivity.