Semantic And Communicative Approaches To The Translation Of Kurt Vonnegut:Letters

This thesis takes my translation of Kurt Vonnegut:Letters as a case study to discuss how to employ Peter Newmark's text typology to determine the type of a text and then choose specific translation strategies,under the guidance of Newmark's semantic translation method,to retain the original style of the source text so that the goal of faithfulness could be achieved.Then communicative translation method is applied to ensure readability and popularize the rendering,so that Chinese readers could have a comprehensive understanding of Kurt Vonnegut as a writer.Personal letters,which express the author's feelings,are not for publication,so they belong to the category of expressive text.These letters are important materials for us to understand the author's life and his personal relationships with others.The different tones he assumes in different letters,the unique diction he prefers as a writer of black humor and the colloquial flow of letter writing,all these constitute the unique style of these letters.Semantic translation reduces its translation unit to words and sentences,seeks to represent the meanings of words to retain the original style of source text and to retain the sequence of words and sentences so that the author's thinking process could be appropriately delivered.Therefore,this translation project adopts various strategies to convey the contextual meaning of Vonnegut's words,retain his unique diction,and simulate the sentence structure of the source text.Yet semantic translation suggests retaining the length of a sentence and the position of a clause,which may lead to an awkward syntax in the target text.Besides,in this translation project,Vonnegut's letters are meant for publication so that the translator should also take the general reading public into consideration.Therefore,we have to deliver the same effect as what foreign readers may achieve.The approach of communicative translation allows me to make further amendments to improve the readability of target text,with attention to its effect on the reader.Strategies such as re-sequencing and addition are applied to attain this goal.The semantic and communicative approaches have given me helpful guidance in the process of translating these letters.By combining the two approaches,a better rendering could be achieved.