A Report On The Translation Strategies For The Wordplay In Christmas Days

This report is based on the translation of two stories The SnowMama and The Silver Frog from the book Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson.Winterson is known for her poetic language and use of rhetoric devices in her works.In the selected stories of this book,she displays her wise manipulation of words:wordplay.Wordplay is a big fun for readers of the source text to appreciate the charm of the language,but,due to differences between Chinese and English,an obstacle for a translator to overcome to provide a translation with equivalent effect for readers of the target text.This report mainly summarizes the wordplay in the selected stories of Christmas Days into three categories,namely,alliteration,pun and neologism,and proposes possible translation strategies.In terms of alliteration,three translation strategies are adopted:imitation of alliteration,rhyme,and use of Chinese four-character phrase;in terms of pun,two translation strategies are employed:pun translation and compensation;in terms of neologism,three translation strategies are proposed:transplant,free translation,and creation.Translation of wordplay is no easy task.The difficulties a translator encounters during the translation,however,should not be his or her excuse to abandon the form of the wordplay.A good translator should value the charm of the language and use his or her creativity and imagination to reproduce the wordplay with equivalent or similar effect.This report refers to some translation strategies proposed by scholars and translators,and comes up with a new translation strategy "creation" to ensure that both the form and meaning of a new word coined by the author can be well kept in the translation.