A Report On English-Chinese Dialogue Translation In Sweet Tomorrows(Excerpts)

This translation report is based on the translated version of chapter 16,18,20,22 and24 from the English novel Sweet Tomorrows of the best-seller A Rose Harbor Inn series written by Debbie Macomber.The report studies the dialogue translating strategies in the translation practice.Dialogue is one of the major approaches to shape characters in a novel and can,with different talking styles,present various information including characters' distinctive values,personal characters,social status and occupational differences.Dialogue in Sweet Tomorrows is no exception and the characters in the novel also feature sharply contrasting characteristics in their ways of speaking.In this sense,retaining the stylistic features of dialogue in the novel is the key to the translation quality.The report mainly focuses on the two stylistic features of dialogue—colloquialism and individual characteristics.The stylistic features of spoken language are mainly conveyed through the syntactical measures.Based on the cooperative principle in Grice's conversational implicature and as well as Leech's principle of politeness,the report discusses the translating strategies and techniques including how to cope with fragmental sentences,how omit the subject,and how to render long sentences into shorter ones.As to the syntactical meaning,the report tries to present distinctive stylistic features of dialogue through adding modal particles and selecting appropriate equivalents.Through translating the practice and writing the report,the translator has a better understanding of the language's diversity,the complexity and flexibility of translation,as well as the high knowledge requirements towards a translator.