The Translation Of Abstract Semantics In Travel Notes

This practice report is based on the excerpts of The Road to Little Dribbling(Chapter 14,25 and 26).It is a travel note,the excerpts of which describe the author's experience while traveling in East Anglia,Durham and Cape Wrath.This report analyzes from two perspectives,the language itself and related cultural background,how to handle the abstract semantics in the translation.For the language itself,the report analyzes the Westerner's mind pattern reflected in the source text.They are used to the object-oriented thinking mode and believe everything to be cognizable,which leads to a wide application of nominalization in English.In addition,the Westerners are very good at logical reasoning,which means that they are apt to semantic inference based on the shared meanings of related expression.The translator will also analyze some rhetorical effects,which makes relevant language expression more flexible.But it stands in the way of readers' understanding.As a result,the translator needs to interpret their real meanings caused by the abstract semantics.For the relevant cultural background,this work contains a large amount of cultural information,which cannot be understood just by a literal translation because of the richness in cultural connotation.The translator will refer to the relevant cultural background to analyze their real meanings.Otherwise,the problem of abstract semantics will emerge,which may disturb the readers' understanding.This practice will greatly help improve the translator's translation competence and deepen understanding of related work.It will also provide good experience and lessons for the translation of other travel notes and play its role in cultural transmission.