An Argumentation For "Harmony" Theory In Literature Translation Based On The Translation Of Thank You For Your Service

Literal translation and free translation balanced each other on the scale of translation domain. Sometimes one weighs out the other while at other times it’s the other way around. There’s controversy all the way along the development of translation theories over the question of which is the better solution. The disagreement could never be more intense when it comes to the translation of literary works. After learning some popular and influential translation theories and applying some of them to guide the translation and paper writing, the reporter has absorbed and digested so much from the studies in the past.It’s under a specific social background that a translation theory comes into being. Over the last century, so many practice-founded translation theories, either the "functional equivalence" theory proposed by Eugene Nada or the principles of "importing foreign culture by literal translation" advocated by Chinese writer Lu Xu, were yielded in response to the uniqueness and characteristics of the time. Nowadays, in the unprecedented backdrop of the21st century, when cross-cultural exchanges take place every now and then with Chinese policies of "bringing in" and "going global", the cultural gap between different nations was literally narrowed and new translations theories are about to play their roles in bringing heart-to-heart literature interchanges into common lives. Particularly, of all the new theories, the reporter is impressed by "cultural harmony" theory proposed by Zheng Hailing, who had elaborated this idea in details in his work Studies on Literary Translation. Herein, he put forward the idea that harmony is the basic principle in translation, emphasizing on the importance of balancing the cultural divergences shared by source text and target text. He advocates that cultural balance is the best path to achieving the most satisfying results of preserving academic values while promoting cross-cultural understanding at the same time. In terms of the process of translating, Doctor Zheng Hailing holds that the harmony in translation depends on the smarter choices made by the translators (well known as recreation), including words, sentence structures, sentence patterns and the tone. The reporter, with all respect and cautiousness for what had been achieved by previous scholars and experts, especially "Harmony Theory" by Zheng Hailing, has pinned down the topic to argue the reasonability of "Harmony Theory" in translation based on a thorough analysis of the original writing, the translation and the understanding of the readers.The source text chosen in this translation project is the newly published book called Thank You for Your Service written by David Finkel, which was listed as one of the "Book of the Year" by New York Times and The Economist in2013. This novel, set in the Iraq War, describes the negative influence and long-term sufferings deep down their hearts that the war had left to the soldiers. It exposes their scars, physical and mental, to the whole world so as to call for people’s assistance in helping them recover. Features of this work can be captured in its frequency of reversing the timeline, depressed plots, rich inner soliloquies and combination of narrative and emotional descriptions. The writer, David Finkel, touches every reader deeply with his fine and moving lines, indulges them with meticulously exquisite plotting and psychological description and unveils the most painful scars with the most plain setting of daily life.The project excerpted the prologue and the first two chapters, which take for10,504words, to translate. Exercising each translation strategy specified in the theory, such as overall grasp, preference to free translation, and taking a sentence as a translation unit, the reporter detailed the theme, mode of narrative and expression and linguistic features of the original writing and demonstrated the rationality of "Harmony Theory" by typical examples. This piece of translation was conducted under the guidance of "Harmony Theory", which serves to testify that in a time of increasing cultural integration, the ultimate criterion of literature translation is no longer leaning to the author or the reader, but a cultural compromise of the both, and literary works would be of more translatability and appreciation in the foreseeable future by practicing "Harmony Theory", thus increasing the possibility of a worldwide harmonious cross-cultural exchange.