A Translation Report On Is That A Fish In Your Ear? (Chapter Four, Five And Six)

This is a translation report on Is That a Fish in Your Ear?(Chapter Four,Five and Six),an academic monograph of translation written by David Bellos.However,different from those books of its kind,what it focuses on is the essence and the meaning of translation instead of translation theories or translation skills through specific and lively examples.Whether the translation is the substitution of the original,the paradox of “foreign-soundingness” on fictions of the foreign,and something about mother tongue are mainly discussed in chapter four,five and six,respectively.The translation project has certain social value as well as social significance for lacking such kind of text in China for now.On the one hand,the number of such texts can be expanded to provide more choices for professional readers;on the other hand,ordinary readers also have access to it for its plain words,which can meet the needs of ordinary readers as well.Focusing on conveying the author's ideals and concepts to the target reader,the source text belongs to an informative text.Thus,based on the Text Typology Theory of Peter Newmark,communicative-dominated and semantic-assisted strategies and translation skills,such as conversion,reconstruction,addition,reference,defining and so on,are used at lexical,syntactical,textual and cultural levels during the translation process,expecting to acquire the similar effect between readers of translation and readers of the original.Through the translation project,the translator comes to the following conclusion:communicative translation and semantic translation complement each other instead of excluding each other.Therefore,the translator cannot choose single translation strategy in any translation.Meanwhile,it is impossible for any translator to achieve the complete equivalence in form or in content for the differences of language between Chinese and English.Thus,the translator should choose the appropriate translation strategies and translation methods according to the content of the text and the author's intention,and pay attention to the readability of the translation and thetarget readers' acceptability.What's more,the translator should allow the loss of meaning,to some extent,without changing the original meaning.