A Report On The Translation Of Before We Were Yours(Excerpt)

This is a report on the translation of Before We Were Yours which is the work of Lisa Wingate,an American best-seller writer,who is proficient at using simple words to narrate the story with perseverance and courage.The novel,based on the actual event of the Tennessee Children's Home Society involved with child trafficking scandal,tells Rill and her family's miserable experience,exploring the theme of family,corruption and human nature.Centered on the two main characters Rill and Avery,the novel starts from two clues which are set in different time and space to lead readers to disclose the truth.The words of this novel are concise and the characters are lively;the writer is adept in using metaphor,paying attention to environmental description and clue setting.The novel conveys love and power in concise words,which not only enables Chinese readers to understand the incidents of child trafficking in the Tennessee Children's Home Society in American history,but also to feel the history and culture of the United States,and it has enlightenment and educational significance.The words translated reach to ten thousand including prelude and the first three chapters of the novel.The main characters are all on the stage.Through these four chapters,readers can have a general understanding of the plots and contents of the novel.The excerpt contains a wonderful description of characters and environment,well-designed plots and attractive contents.Due to the strong literature features of the novel,the paper believes that Toury's descriptive translation theory is suitable for guiding the literary translation.Toury's descriptive translation theory emphasizes the position of translation in the target language culture system,promoting the change of translation studies from the source language orientation to the target language orientation.Translation is to translate the meaning and the meaning is limited by the context.The concept of “proper contextualization” presented by Toury can help translators correctly understand the original texts and solve the difficulties encountered in translation.Translation norms theory,the core of the descriptive translation theory,mainly includes initial norms,preliminary norms and operational norms which run through the entire translation practice.The translator is an individual with subjectivity and is affected by his/her own habitus,social field and etc..Only through the translator can the norms have an impact on the translation.Different translation subjects follow different norms.The actual translation process is complex.The translator needs to consider the two important parameters in the initial norms based on the content and style of the original texts—“adequacy” and “acceptability” to determine the translation strategy,and then selects the appropriate operational norms according to the context to translate.The translation norms exist objectively,but this does not mean that the translator's behavior is all passively subject to the translation norms.The translator can give play to their subjectivity and use the appropriate translation norms to translate texts in combination with the context.This paper will use the context,translation norms and translator habitus of the descriptive translation theory to guide the translation of the novel Before We Were Yours.This translation report consists of four parts.The first chapter is an overview of this translation project including the source,introduction and meaning of the translation work.The second chapter introduces the translation process comprising pre-translation preparation,text translation and post-translation proofreading.The third chapter is to analyze the translated texts by the descriptive translation theory from the perspective of title,characters,environment,culture and rhetoric.The last chapter is to summarize the translation practice.