Selected Translation Of Grit:the Power Of Passion And Perseverance And A Critical Commentary

This thesis is based on the English-Chinese translation of Grit:the Power of Passion and Perseverance written by American Chinese Angela Duckworth.The translation has been done under the guidance of Peter Newmark's communicative translation and semantic translation.The paper aims at analyzing the problems in translation and exploring how the problems are solved with the specific techniques and methods.As one of the bestsellers,Grit:the Power of Passion and Perseverance corrects the wrong idea that talent is the key to success and illustrates the secret to great achievement is passion and perseverance called grit.The excerpts include Chapter Seven and Chapter Eight of this book.Chapter Seven lists a number of success stories from all walks of life and tells readers only when one sticks with their commitments longer than others will he or she has advantages of grit over others.Chapter Eight,enlightens readers on the need to set a purpose in life and work to serve not only themselves but also others,which will push them to have a strong desire for success and to be passionate and persistent all the time.The critical commentary is composed of four parts:introduction,methods for achieving accuracy of translation,techniques for enhancing readability of the translation as well as conclusion.The first part is mainly about the original text,the significance of the project as well as the applicable translation theory.The second part is about the methods for achieving accuracy of translation,including literal translation and liberal translation.The third part is about the techniques for enhancing readability of the translation,including conversion of part of speech,turning phrases into clauses,using four-character Chinese idioms and coherence.The last part is conclusion.In a word,owing to the great differences between English and Chinese,problems can be encountered in translation on grammatical,lexical and syntactic levels.To solve the problems in translation,many theories have been developed.One of those theories are communicative translation and semantic translation put forward by Peter Newmark.His theories have bridged the gap between emphasis on source language and target language to some extent.Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that on the readers of the original.Semantic translation attempts to render,as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow,the exact contextual meaning of the original.Based on the text type and characteristics of the original text,the translator has chosen communicative translation as the main approach and semantic translation as the assistant one.To transfer the original information completely and accurately and to make the translation readable,the translator has employed such specific techniques and methods as literal translation,liberal translation,conversion of part of speech,turning phrases into clauses,using four-character Chinese idioms and coherence.