A Report On The Translation Of The Burning Man

As a translation report,this paper takes the Chinese translation from Chapter 20 to Chapter 23 of The Burning Man as translation practice.Full of suspense,this legal thriller is written in a lively style by Phillip Margolin,a well-known American best-selling legal novelist.Moreover,it provides its readers with a relatively deep understanding of the America legal and penal system.This report will explore the translation of foreign legal thrillers by the practice of translating The Burning Man.As far as translation shift is concerned,many Western translation scholars have done a lot of research.One remarkable and influential theorist,John Cunnison Catford,put forward his theory about translation shift in his book A Linguistic Theory of Translation.He pointed out that shift is the most basic method of translation.In particular,chapters on translation shift are introduced into China and quoted a lot in the publication of related Chinese papers and books.In other words,Catford’s translation theory has been widely accepted by the academia in China.This report analyzes the translation of these four chapters among which dialogues have large proportion and most of them are questions in the court.Legal words and sentences are simple but concise.Hence,this report,based on features of mystery novels,tries to employ Catford’s shift model to examine translation shifts existing on and below the level of sentence translation process of the three chapters,including level shifts,structure shifts and class shifts.The author tries to find out some fair ideal translation methods under the guidance of translation shift theory,in order to solve the existing problem within the process of translation,so as to improve the translation of legal thrillers.This translation report consists of five chapters,of which chapter four is the most important.Chapter four mainly expounds three types of translation shifts with the help of case study,based on translation shift theory.Through the practice,the author found that different translation shifts reproduce different levels of "equivalence" and create atmosphere and render reader’s response to varying degrees.In the process,the translator should pay attention to the shifts between source language and target language and respect the original work by remaining the suspense effect.Meanwhile she should be sensitive to the response of the target readers.