Application Of Vinay & Darbelnet’s Translation Model In Translation From English To Chinese

In the book Comparative Stylistics of French and English, J. P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet exerted comprehensive comparisons and analysis between French and English at word level, sentence level and information level and wrote a seminal work for translation practitioners. They came up with seven methods of translation, including borrowing, caique, literal translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation. As a guide for study of translation shift, the seven procedures had profound influence upon later researches. Thus the writer decides to use Vinay& Darbelnet’s model for translation analysis.Examples in this article are picked from the Chinese translation of the prologue and part one of Through A Screen Darkly, authored by Martha Bayles, associate professor of humanities at college of arts and science of Boston College. The book demonstrates how vulgarization of American popular culture has distorted the image of the U.S. for millions of people around the world by a great quantity of interviews and data analysis and puts forward recommendations for a revival of public diplomacy.Guided by theories of translation shift, this thesis analyzes the application of Vinay & Darbelnet’s seven methods in translation from English to Chinese with examples. It is suggested that translators choose translation strategies wisely in the translation process based on thorough understanding of Vinay & Darbelnet’s model.