A Study Of C-e Translation Of Documentary Literature Under The Guidance Of Semantic And Communicative Translation

As the exchanges between China and the outer world are on the steady increase,it has become a definite trend to spread Chinese culture.Since China began to open up,massive Western cultural products have been flowing into China,but few Chinese outstanding works have gained popularity overseas,especially documentary literature.Documentary literature,as a narrative text,features both authenticity and literariness.It is based on genuine events occurring in everyday life or in history,but emerges in the form of literary work.In the process of translating documentary literature,translators should first of all take into account the particular conditions of the original text,to achieve the best effect while preserving the original images as possible as they can.Semantic translation lays emphasis on conveying the original culture and on representing accurately the original expression;but communicative translation emphasizes the effect of the target text and the feeling of target readership.Since documentary literature has the features of authenticity and literariness,semantic translation and communicative translation should be adopted more adroitly.This thesis takes Chapter 13 to Chapter 17 from The Red Army Passes Through My Hometown as an example,discussing methods for translating documentary literature under the guidance of the theory of semantic and communicative translation.This thesis first gives a brief account of the theory relating to semantic and communicative translation,and at the same time analyzes the features of documentary literature.Moreover,the thesis also analyzes the textual features of the original book and points out the difficulties in its translation.Through the translation practice,the author of the thesis claims that semantic and communicative translation can facilitate the improvement of translation quality.This thesis proposes three translation methods.First,semantic or communicative translation of word,including substitution,amplification and transliteration;second,semantic or communicative translation of sentence,including restructuring,combining,splitting and preserving the sentence structure;third,semantic and communicative translation of rhetoric,including thereproduction of figures of speech.In conclusion,this thesis is expected to provide a help for translating documentary literature by offering some specific methods.