A Study On E-C Translation Of Brief Biographies From The Perspective Of Newmark's Text Typology

With the development of globalization,English has been integrated into all aspects of our lives.Brief biography in English magazines and newspaper is the summary of life experiences and honors of world celebrities,helping Chinese readers to study English and understand celebrities' growing experience,success and social changes.Based on linguists Karl Biihler and Jakobson's view on language functions,Peter Newmark,a representative of the linguistic school of translation theories,classifies language functions into six kinds,the expressive,the informative,the vocative,the phatic,the aesthetic and the metalingual functions,among which the first three are the main functions of language and main purposes of using language.He holds that most texts include three main functions with an emphasis on one of the three.What's more,he puts forward the concepts of "semantic translation","communicative translation"and "correlative theory of translation",which provides a new perspective for translation activities and studies.After collecting and finishing materials,I found that there were not many translation studies on English brief biographies at present,lacking studies on E-C translation practice and theory,which lead to translated biographies of uneven quality in the market.With distinctive functions,different parts of a piece of brief biography can deliver information,express emotion and affect readers respectively.If a biography is translated with different aims and methods depending on the different functions of different parts,readers will acquire a lot of information quickly,empathizing with the celebrities and the biographers.Otherwise,lacking characteristics of every function,the translated biography will be boring,which not only damages readers' reading experience but also hinders the popularization of excellent English brief biographies.So,Newmark's text typology is adopted in this study of E-C translation of brief biographies with analysis of the translation effect and translation methods of chosen examples.The examples are from dozens of brief biographies of 2000-8000 words from Western Science Masters,Western Political Figures and other translated biographies.According to Newmark's text typology,different parts of an English brief biography can focus on expressive function,informative function or vocative function respectively.As a result,translators should translate and judge their translations by corresponding functions.After detailed exemplifications,it is concluded that translators should apply semantic translation and a correlative approach to translation as methods to the parts of expressive function,communicative translation and a correlative approach to translation as methods,annotation,omission and division as technique to the parts of informative function,communicative translation as methods,extension,reorganization and amplification as technique to the parts of vocative function.The research aims to provide some suggestions and directions on the study of E-C translation of brief biographies.