A Translation Report On Wait For The Rain (Chapter One-chapter Four)

This is an English-Chinese translation report which is about a novel——Wait for the Rain. The heroine of this novel is Daphne. Daphne White is looking at the cask of forty—and is overwrought with what she sees and what she has experienced. Her ex-husband is going to remarried with his new girlfriend, her teenage daughter, Emma,hardly needs her anymore, and the career she used to dream about has somehow run away from her grasp. She’s almost not the spirited and optimistic young woman she used to be. As she sets to a trip to a Caribbean island to mark the new ten years with her old friends from college, Daphne is in anything but the feeling to celebrate.During this trip, she comes across a man named Clay, who is much younger than Daphne. Her internal voice is warning her that she is too old to have a deep relation with this young man. But she disregards the age reality. In fact, this tropical way might be a great chance to picture her future in a bright sun-drenched light. With the help of her friends, Daphne rediscovers her passion for her life, as well as her enthusiasm for herself.The author, Maria Murnane, has written a lot of female sensibility novels related to the love, the marriage, and the cultivation of the children. Compared with the Chinese female sensibility novels, Maria Murnane’s works are simpler for they have no explosive plots. But to some extent, Maria’s works are more attractive for the readers.Like this novel Wait for the Rain, it is like a dear friend, chatting with you about her trifling matters in her life.Through cases analysis, this translation report mainly analyzes the translation process, translation methods and translation skills used. This translation project is a literary translation. As one of translation styles, literary translation skills include addition, reduction, assimilation, alienation and so on. These basic translation techniques play an important role in this translation project. Therefore the translator should use these translation skills flexibly when translating. For the translation itself,the target text should not only focus on the faith of translation, but also on theaesthetics of the sentences. To a great extent, the readability of the translation and the acceptability of the readers influence the aesthetics of the translation. The translator should have a great level both of Chinese and English.This translation report includes four parts: translation of the title of book,translation of long sentences, translation of short sentences and translation of the conjunctions in the paragraph. And the translation of short sentences are divided into two parts——Motion descriptions and dialogues. In the process of translation, several parallel texts and some translation strategies are used.Through this translation practice, the translator draws a conclusion, which is as follows: First, the translator should be well at English and Chinese, because the sentence structure, the semantic functions and other aspects are different in English and Chinese. Secondly, the translator should be familiar with translation skills and translation strategies. Translation skills and strategies lead a translator how to translate the text accurately. Third, when translating, the translator should not destroy the aesthetics of the original. What’s more, parallel texts will be of great importance. In the end, the translator should focus on the words usage, and revise the translation again and again.