E-C Translation Of The Fourth Chapter From Indians,Environment,and Identity On The Borders Of American Literature And A Critical Commentary

This project is composed of a selected translation from English to Chinese, plus a critical commentary. The source text is selected from Indians, Environment, and Identity on the Borders of American Literature:From Faulkner and Morrison to Walker and Silko written by Lindsey Claire Smith and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008. This book is divided into five chapters and it explores the works of five well-known American writers, focusing on the race relations in American literature and putting it in natural settings to study the interracial and cross-cultural alliances.The translated part is chapter four of this book entitled "Alice Walker’s Eco-’Warriors’".In the pericope, the author expresses her ideas about the works of African American writer Alice Walker. There are inevitably some difficulties in this translation project, which are found in the unique cultural backgrounds of the source text, the connotations of many proper nouns and culture-loaded words in the source text, and the long and complex sentences of the source text.Considering these difficulties, the translator adopts the strategies of foreignization and domestication proposed by Lawrence Venuti so as to retain the cultural elements of the source text and also ensure the fluency and readability of the translated text. The second part of this project will show some typical examples to explain how foreignization and domestication are achieved by using specific methods including literal translation with footnotes, turning words or phrases turned into clauses, semantic extension and semantic explication and reinventing sentence structures. In addition, the translation also emphasizes cohesion and coherence in terms of the context so as to render the whole text properly.It is hoped that this translation project will provide a more comprehensive view for Chinese readers and scholars to have a better understanding of American literature, especially race relations, and the social conditions of America.