A Report On Translating The War That Saved My Life(Excerpts)

Literary works differ greatly from other kinds of works due to the artistic characteristics contained in them.When it comes to translation,literary works call for not only an accurate conveying of the original contents but also the reproduction of the literary style.The same is true of the translation of children's literature.This study takes Relevance Translation Theory as the theoretical basis.The Theory holds that linguistic features provide clues to guide the readers to the intended interpretation.Because such clues,more exactly,communicative clues,reflect both the intended information and stylistic properties,preserving them can help reproduce the original contents and style in translation,thus realizing optimal relevance.Communicative clues can be provided by semantics,syntactics,phonetics and graphology.In the report,the book named The War That Saved My Life written by the American author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley is chosen as the translation material.Detailed case study is given to show how to preserve original communicative clues including semantic,syntactic,phonetic and graphological clues,so as to retain the original contents and style.This report attempts to present the instructive role that Relevance Translation Theory plays in the translation of children's literature.