An English-Chinese Translation Of The Boy Travelers In The Far East:Adventures Of Two Youths In A Journey To Japan&China (Excerpts) And A Report On The Translation

This thesis consists of an English-Chinese translation of excerpts of an adventure novel The Boy Travelers in the Far East:Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Japan&China written by American journalist and writer Thomas Wallace Knox more than 100 years ago,and a report based on the translation practice.Under the guidance of Gu Zhengkun's thoughts in plural complementarism of translation standard and Peter Newmark's translation theory,this thesis sets out to study the characteristics and methods of translating juvenile literature like the original book,which is illustrated with a realistic setting of history and culture different from that of the source language.The thesis attempts to explore methods to guide the translator's decision-making in translating this type of literature with examples discussing translation of the book's title,translation on the lexical,sentential and textual levels.Gu Zhengkun's plural complementarism of translation standard proposes three levels of translation standard:source text as the absolute standard,best approximation to the source text as the top standard,and specific standard that is defined by the translator according to the specific situation.The author of the thesis attempts to set aesthetic and academic standards as the goal from a macroscopic perspective,aiming to produce a readable translated work that could reproduce the original book's flavor as a juvenile literature and exhibit a scientifically rigorous pursuit of history study.Strategies such as zero translation,back translation and annotation are adopted in dealing with source texts that contain historical and cultural elements or connote contextual sense.Besides,the author is also inspired to replace or improve words or sentences in potentially awkward-sounding or inaccurate translation from their general literal equivalents,in order to prevent literal approximation to the source text from resulting in a target text that would actually diverge the translation from the top standard of best approximation.When it comes to translation issues on the microscopic level,Newmark's system of semantic and communicative translations,which is integrated by his correlative approach,guides the translator to analyze the importance of the source language before attempting to locate a position between the two connected directions for the target text.During the process of the translation practice,the author finds that sometimes the source language can be so important to the point that only by retaining it in the target text could the coordination between semantic and communicative translations be achieved for translating the specific text itself and other related texts,while in most cases the source language itself doesn't embrace any particular significance,where the translator has to work out a translation that may suit the custom of the target language when trying to reproduce the original content and specific flavor.The wider gap between the source and the target languages,the bigger adjustment the translator has to make.In addition,it is also discovered that the translator's challenges often transcend the level of compromising between semantic and communicative translations and require the translator to turn to the macroscopic guidance of the translation standard and determine a target text that could suit the set specific standard best after making some comparison and weighing.