A Translation Report Based On The Guidance Of Semantic And Communicative Translation

The translation material of this paper is excerpted from Approaches to Translation which was written by the famous translation theorist Peter Newmark.With the guidance of communicative translation(CT)theory and semantic translation(ST)theory,the author made a study of the translation of several chapters from this book and analyzed the problems appeared during the translation process as well as adopted treatments on the level of word,sentence and text.Approaches to Translation belongs to informative text and ought to be translated with the guidance of communicative translation theory.Nevertheless,the language of the excerpted chapters also possesses the characteristics of expressive text and vocative text.Therefore,the author deems that it is essential to choose appropriate translation theory on the basis of characteristics of translation theory,which can be used as the guidance of translation practice when translating Approaches to Translation.Namely,CT should be used to deliver the original message in ways which are in accordance with cultural,linguistic,pragmatic usage of the target language,while ST ought to be used to reproduce the form of the original within the scope of target language norms.The author comes to a conclusion through translation practice: when translating words,it is necessary to look up dictionaries and refer to parallel texts and then find the most accurate equivalent words on the basis of concrete context.When the words in target language have the same meaning but different word class with the words in original language,it is essential to change the word class so as to conform to the language expression of target language.When translating sentences,if there are corresponding sentence structures between English and Chinese,semantic translation theory ought to be adopted for the guidance of translation practice and the original sentence structure should be reserved.However,when translating infrequent sentences in Chinese such as passive sentences and subordinate clauses,communicative translation theory ought to be used and the translator should adjust sentence structures and adopt amplification and omission etc.to make the translation correspond with the expression pattern of target language.Hope the translation report can contribute to the academic work on translation field.