A Translation Project Report Of Is That A Fish In Your Ear(Preface, Chapters One, Two And Three)

This is a translation project report on Is That a Fish in Your Ear(preface, chapter one, two and three) by David Bellos, who is the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University. The original book has 34 chapters and covers vast topics with witty tone. Occasionally, the author has some critics and questions certain concepts in translation. In the first three chapters, the author talks about the definition, category and origin of translation, opening a new viewpoint for translation studies. Besides, it's a book about human conditions. It unfolds the link between individuals and between peoples, using languages or not. China has a late start in translation compared with the West and variety qualities of translation works fill the market. The English version of the book is well written and easily understood and the Chinese version is to attract more readers... The difficulties the translator encountered during translation have been solved using sentence-breaking, conversion and replacing, following the rules of translator's subjectivity and translation as rewriting which both are the expression of visibility of the translator. Trying to deliver the same meaning of culture-loaded words, the author replaced them with ones containing Chinese culture. Through this translation process, the translator has following conclusions: formal equivalence is nearly impossible to achieve due to the differences of language structures between Chinese and English, in which the translator has been dedicated to do, we can see that there's a long way ahead; there are more freedom for the translator to split and reform sentences according to rules of Chinese without changing the original meaning; translating as rewriting has made translator double identity, translator and producer. Language recreation is beneficial to lingual improvement.