Translation Of Fictional Dialogue Guided By The Communicative Translation Theory

This translation project report is based on James Agee’s autobiographical novel A Death in the Family.The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 and has had a very high literary value.During the process of translation,the translator finds that the dialogue of characters accounts for a large proportion in the whole novel,and the dialogue of the characters plays a vital role in promoting the development of the plot,shaping the characters and expressing the author’s thoughts.Therefore,for the translation of this novel,the quality of character dialogue translation is crucial.Guided by Newmark’s communicative translation theory,this report explores the translation methods of the characters’ dialogue.This paper is divided into five chapters.Chapter One is the description of the translation project,mainly introducing the reasons for the topic selection,research significance and research content.Chapter Two is the description of the whole translation procedure,including pre-translation preparation,translation process and proofreading.Chapter Three introduces Newmark’s communicative translation theory from two aspects: background and content.Chapter Four is the application of communicative translation theory in the translation of fictional dialogue.In the way of case analysis,this chapter discusses the specific methods of dialogue translation which mainly include amplification,semantic extension,pronoun conversion,equivalent interpretation,and meaning supplement from three aspects: fitting the characters’ emotion,fitting the characters’ identity and fitting the characters’ personality.Chapter Five is a summary of the whole translation project,which summarizes the difficulties of this translation project,reflects the translator’s own inadequacies,and also puts forward the direction of future efforts.