Report On The Translation Of The Sellout (Excerpts) With Focus On The Representation Of Defamiliarization In Literary Translation

This is a report on the translation of the American fiction The Sellout.This fiction is the most important work of Paul Beatty,the American writer and socialist.This book has.won the 2016 Man Booker Prize,with Paul Beatty becoming the first American prize winner in the history.There is no published Chinese version of this book till now.The Sellout is set in a small town named "Dickens" in southern California,telling a story about a black boy(the narrator)and his father,their ridiculous experiences and strange father-son relationship.Paul Beatty is African American himself but he used a lot of discriminatory words in his book,which is actually a realistic reflection of American society and a sharp satire against the American political system.Distinguished from non-literary texts,literary work has its characteristics,among which the most outstanding one is its literariness.Scholars of the Russian Formalist School have named the special organizing way of literary texts as Defamiliarization,which acts as a stronger demonstration of the literariness,making literary language the deviation from the daily discourse and playing an important role in the revolution against normal descriptions.Defamiliarization as a literary device has been studied for quite some time,but it is rarely researched in the field of translation studies.The study on defamiliarization in translation is of vital importance for the progress of both translation studies and translation practice.This report is a case study of the translation of The Sellout(excerpts)with focus on the representation of defamiliarization.Firstly,it has introduced the translation task,including the value of the source text and the significance of the task.Secondly,this report has described the translation process.Thirdly,this report has concluded and reflect on the previous studies,managing to figure out practical strategies to guide the translation practice.The fourth part is the most important part,analyzing the application of defamiliarized translation strategy with examples selected from The Sellout.Finally,this report has concluded the lessons learned from the practice,tips for the translation of similar texts and deficiencies in the translation.The major translation strategies applied in the practice are Newmark's "alienization"and "hybridization",combined with Jin Bing's strategy.The translator has chosen the proper strategy flexibly to solve various of problems in the translating process,which can be regarded as an experimental attempt for the literary translation.