E-C Translation Report On The First Life Of Adamastor (Excerpt)

In this translation report,a master's degree paper,the source text comes from The First Life of Adamastor,whose author is Andre Brink,one of three pillars in South-Africa post-colonial writing.The First Life of Adamastor published in 1993 reflects the post-colonial history in 1500 s,from the perspectives of the tribal chief of a Khoikhoi Tribe.With the meta-fiction and culture-loaded words of third world country,The First Life of Adamastor is definitely anti-colonial book,worthy of researching.In this translation task,post-colonial translation theory is adopted as the major guidance to complete the translation work.Under the theory,translation strategies,such as metaphrase,foot note,free translation,couplet and parallelism,go a long way to keep the original literature characteristics.And,with the help of functional equivalence theory,the translator deals with the long and complicated sentences by synthesis and splitting.But there still are some mistakes,such as how to measure the power behind the culture and how to cope with it with the help of correct translation strategies.Taking the translation of The First Life of Adamastor as example,the author aims to conclude her translation process,shares her personal experience and learning,and may take what she learn from this project as a new start in the future translation study.This translation report contains six chapters as following:Chapter one,the introduction part,gives a brief introduction about this translation task,especially purpose and significance of this task.Chapter two,the task description,has three major parts.Firstly,it introduces the background information and contents of the source text.Secondly,it introduces the author of the source text,Adrew Brink,from the perspective of his writing style.Thirdly,it introduces the translation theories which the translator adopts: they are post-colonial translation theory and functional equivalence theory.Chapter three,analysis of source text,defines the source text as literature work,and so this task should obey the aesthetic requirements as literature translation.And in order to achieve this goal,the translation of cultural-loaded words and metafiction,the two major characteristics of source text,should be the key and difficult points of this translation task.Chapter four,application of post-colonial translation theory in translating The First Life of Adamastor,is one of the major chapters of this translation report.It cites examples to show how the translator reflects the original literal characteristics under the guidance of post-colonial translation theory,by metaphrase,foot note,free translation,couplet and parallelism.Chapter five,application of functional equivalence theory in dealing with long and complicated sentences,is another important part of this translation report.It shows examples that translator deals with the long and complicated sentences by synthesis and splitting.Chapter six,reflection and conclusion,concludes this translation work,and points out the mistakes the translator made in this process.At last,it draws a simple map of the future translation study for the translator.