A Report On The E-C Translation Of A Little Life(Excerpts)

Translations of numerous foreign fictions become flourishing in our literature market,but not all of them are in good qualities. If works of translation intend to achieve an excellent literalness, both surface meaning and inference meaning hinted by the words in source text should be expressed. Therefore, how to translate rhetorical devices well becomes the key to translating literary translation. Many rhetorical devices are used in this English fiction, but translator only does some studies on similes and metaphors in E-C translation.The book was published in 2015 without Chinese translation version and was chosen as one of the top 100 popular books in New York Time. It narrates the story that four graduates go to New York to pursue for their dreams. Although they face many a setbacks and unfair social phenomena, they never give up and finally achieve their dreams. This valuable spirit is not equipped by every graduate in modern society; therefore, translator plans to inspire all of us.Some excerpts in the first part are chosen as translation material, whose language is simple and a little humorous. A kind of positivity is expressed in a way of finding fun through trouble.Many simile and metaphor sentences are used in those excerpts; therefore, the point of this report is how to accurately translate simile and metaphor to make our readers accurately understand the translation.Before translation, a great deal of preparation is done. Firstly, translator thoroughly reads the source text and searches relevant parallel texts to understand its heroes’characters and language style. Then lots of theoretical books are looked up and the Functional Equivalence Theory put forward by Nida, E.A is chosen as theory guidance. The theory underlines that meaning is first and form is second. Besides, this theory emphasizes on the equivalence of word, semantic, and style in translation and translator should use the most natural language closing to the target language to express the innovative meaning hidden after the words. Under the guidance of the Functional Equivalence Theory, translator generalizes several translation strategies such as reproduction the image, substitution the image, deletion the image, annotation, transformation metaphor to simile and so on to swiftly and accurately express the meaning and the emotion of author in source text. In a word, translator pursues for the best effect where target readers understand the translation in the same way which source language readers understand the source text. At last, translator draws a brief conclusion to report and points out some deficits in this report, writing the personal feeling during the process of translation after months of writing and translating.