Strategies For Translating Biography From The Perspective Of Semantic Translation And Communicative Translation

Biography is a kind of narrative literature that features the balance between authenticity and literariness. Therefore, authenticity and literariness should be paid particular attention in translation at the same time. It requires the translators to focus on accurate facts as well as sensational descriptions in order to reproduce the original style and achieve sound expression effects. And the quite difficult task in the translation of biography is how to achieve an ideal balance between authenticity and literariness. The concepts of semantic translation and communicative translation put forward by Peter Newmark have shed light on the problem mentioned above.According to Newmark’s classification of text types and corresponding translation strategies, semantic translation applies to expressive texts. It is faithful to the source language and culture so that the reader can appreciate the original meaning and language style; communicative translation applies to informative texts and vocative texts, and it pays significant attention to expression effects and tends to be smoother and clearer so as to make the translation easy to understand. As authenticity and literariness are integrated in biography, these two translation strategies should be employed in a comprehensive way.This case study is based on the translation of Lee Kuan Yew:The Crucial Years (Chapter 21) and analyzed with the theory of semantic translation and communicative translation. With the selected samples particularly words and phrases, sentence patterns and expressions concerning style from the translation, the results indicate that these two translation theories can be combined in translation practice and provide guidance on how to choose the appropriate strategy corresponding with different contexts.