A Report On The E-C Translation Of Dialogues In Maritime Novel Mr Midshipman Easy

Scholars have been paying more and more attention to the study of maritime literature due to the “Maritime Power” strategy put forward in China years ago.As a practice report on English to Chinese translation of dialogues,this report describes the translation of the maritime novel Mr Midshipman Easy which is written by the British writer Frederick Marryat.Having reviewed the functional equivalence theory put forward by Eugene A.Nida and analyzed the features of dialogues in this fiction,the report discusses the translation methods of dialogues in the fiction from the perspective of functional equivalence theory.First of all,the report introduces the translation project from the aspects of its background,contents,and significance.Then it describes the preparations the translator has made before translation,including the collection of materials,reading parallel texts,theoretical study,and text analysis.The report also reviews the translation process and proofreading work.Before translating,the translator has got a basic understanding of the fiction through reading parallel texts and searching for information.The translation practice is guided by the functional equivalence theory put forward by Nida,who believes that translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message,first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style.Ideal readers of a translated text should be able to understand and appreciate it in essentially the same way as the original readers do.”Fiction is regarded as one of the most dialogic genres,so the translation of dialogues plays an important role in the translation of fiction.Totranslate dialogues successfully,the translator should try to reproduce the characters' characteristics in the translation,making characters in the translated text as similar to those in the source text as possible.That is to say,the translator has to make efforts to let the readers of the translated text understand and appreciate the characters in the similar way as the original readers do.After analyzing the dialogues,it is found that dialogues in this fiction have the features of colloquialism and individuation.Next,the report discusses the methods of dialogue translation,that is,what translation methods the author has adopted to reproduce the language features of dialogues and individualize characters from the aspects of lexical equivalence and syntactical equivalence.In order to make target readers understand and appreciate dialogues better,the translator uses plain words and phrases,adds modal particles and degree adverbs at the lexical level.Meanwhile,the translator reconstructs the sentence,omits subject and address,and changes a declarative sentence into a rhetorical sentence at the syntactical level.The author also has her reflections on this translation practice and makes some suggestions for later translators to refer to.Through the project description and analysis,it is found that when translating dialogues in fictions,translators should choose a proper theory to guide their practice.In the process of translation,they should make adjustments according to the features of dialogues and the differences among characters.Only when they pay attention to the language features and individualized characters can they reproduce the language style and characters.In this way,target readers can understand and appreciate the dialogues in essentially the same way as the original readers.However,asa result of lacking sufficient information and terminology bank,the translation practice has some limitations.Meanwhile,the translation methods adopted by the translator still need to be tested in future translation practice.