A Report On The E-C Translation Of Medicine River (Excerpts)

This is an English-Chinese translation report on the North American Indian novel Medicine River.Chapter ?,Chapter ?and Chapter ? selected from the book serve as the translation text and source of case study.Medicine River is Thomas King's first novel featuring the cultural identity recognition.The novel displays its distinct dialectical features in concise,vivid and plain language.Besides introducing the background of the translation project,structure of the report and translation process,the translation report emphasizes on the analyses of the translation difficulties and corresponding translation methods to tackle them.The difficulties in translation are mainly embodied at lexical,sentence and sentence group levels.The difficulties at lexical level consist of the translation of culture-loaded words,colloquial words and American Indian names.The difficulties at sentence level mainly focus on the translation of attributive clauses,passive sentences and long sentences.There are two difficulties mentioned at sentence group level,including the translation of portrait description and short dialogues.Several translation methods are flexibly applied to dealing with those challenges.At lexical level,annotated transliteration is adopted for readers' better understanding of culture-loaded words.American Indian names are cleverly rendered by the method of both transliteration and semantic translation,exactly conveying the content of the original.The meaning implied by the colloquial words differs as contexts change,thus the translator utilizes the diction to deal with them during the translation process.At sentence level,attributive clauses are translated under the principle of conversion,namely converting English attributive clauses into Chinese adverbial clauses.Free from the structures of the original text,long sentences can be translated by the methods of inversion and division to achieve smoothness and accuracy.At sentence group level,to make the translation of the portrait description logically acceptable and semantically coherent,such translation methods as addition and condensation are employed.On the basis of the understanding of context and characters' personalities,short dialogues are rendered by the method of omission,not only presenting the identity characteristics and feelings of speakers but also making readers of the source and target language share the same experience.Through this practice,the translator's ability in English-Chinese translation has been improved significantly.Moreover,the translation practice can help readers gain a further understanding of the North American Indian culture and history,and meanwhile provides some references for other translators rendering such kind of literature.