A Report On E-c Translation Of A Woman In China (Excerpt)

This report discusses a translation practice of A Woman in China written by Mary Gaunt.She was good at using plain words to describe the characters and environments she experienced.The translator has been required to translate chapter 6,chapter 7 and chapter 8,which consists of 15,000 words in all.These three chapters mainly introduce the scenic spots and local customs in Peking.Through the description of her own experience,such as watching plays,visiting the Great Wall,Ming Tombs and two charities,the author of the source text presented the current social environment,like transportations,education backgrounds,and living conditions,in Peking at the beginning of Republic.This translation practice is under the guidance of Jin Di's equivalent effect theory.It states that the objective of the translation is to pursue the functional equivalence rather than formal equivalence,which means that both the source receptors and target receptors can receive the same message and acquire the similar emotion.In this thesis,several cases have been analyzed from the angle of major spirit,concrete fact,and artistic conception,including word translation and sentence translation.In lexical level,the translator analyzes the names of person,places,and scenic spots and words expressing transportations,while in sentence level,the translator discusses the translation of sentences of passive voice,attributive clauses,and long and other complex sentences.According to the writing style of travel narratives,the translator uses various translation skills to translate different kinds of words and sentences so as to achieve fluency and accuracy in the translated text,and thus guarantee the equivalent effect.After this translation practice,the translator has a new cognition about what we can do to make ourselves understand the Chinese history and culture in a comprehensive way.Expect reading Chinese literatures,the translator believes that learning information from foreigners' travel narratives would also be a better way for us to know the history of China.However,at least so far,only a few translation researches on travel narrative have been discovered in academia,the translator hopes that this report can provide some useful experiences and references for further study.