A Report On Dialogue Translation In Silent Child (Excerpts)

As one of the most important methods to portray characters and promote the plot,dialogue in a novel is a reflection of the author’s writing style.Dialogue in novels tends to be short,flexible,derived from daily life but full of vitality.More importantly,its profound implied meaning between the lines can always provide inspirations for the readers.Therefore,in the process of translating a novel,dialogue translation plays a significant role in grasping and conveying the essence of the novel.This report is based on the author’s translation of Silent Child by Sarah A.Denzil,which has topped the bestseller lists on Amazon in the US,UK and Australia,with an attempt to grasp the images of characters and understand the story more clearly through its dialogue translation.During the translation process,the author of this report is mainly faced with the following three difficulties:(1)How to exactly reflect the personality and image of characters in the translated work?(2)How to decode the real meaning of the dialogue in the source text?(3)How to reproduce the dialogue to make the TL readers feel the same as the SL readers do? In order to translate the novel dialogue appropriately,the author deals with the text from three aspects,namely,character,context and TL readers to support her translation work.The present report tries to reflect on and resolve the difficulties in the process of dialogue translation in novels so as to reproduce the charm of the original novel,depict the images of character and develop the story plot.Through this novel translation practice,the author of this report hopes she can improve her translation skills,attain a better grasp of the language features of English novels and accumulate more experience in translating works of the same genre.