A Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of Anything Is Possible(Chapter 3-4)

The translation material is selected from the book Anything is Possible written by Elizabeth Strout.The book tells the story of the inhabitants of Amgash,Illinois,the hometown of the protagonist,Lucy Barton.Lucy becomes a top-notch and successful writer,eventually returning her hometown where she has absent for seventeen years to visit the siblings she leaves behind.She observes that inhabitants are not happy with their lives and they have to take the consequences for bad choices.However,they don?t give up all the time and firmly believe that anything is possible.The translation report is based on two excerpts “Cracked” and “Hit-thumb Theory” of the book Anything is Possible.The reason why the author chooses the two chapters as translation material is that there are a lot of sentences with dashes.Besides,dash in pairs are widely used in the excerpts.As a unique inserted form in written language,dash is widely utilized in English and Chinese writings.After reading some English works and their corresponding translation versions,the author observes that many translators directly transplant dashes in the source texts into the target texts during the translation process.Either do they copy dashes into translation versions or randomly abandon them.Under this circumstance,cohesion and coherence of the discourse may be greatly affected,which sometimes might hinder a number of readers from having an accurate understanding of the translation versions.Based on extensive research into cohesive function of dashes by scholars at home and abroad,the translation report divides the cohesive function of dashes into eight categories in accordance with their semantic indications,including Addition,Explanation,Adversative/Contrastive,Equation,Reason,Result,Replacement and Enumeration.Translation strategies vary according to different cohesive function of dashes.The report primarily analyzes the translation strategies of discourse with dash in pairs.It finally summarizes three categories of translation strategies that can be applies to translation English dashes,including zero-translation,adding logical connectors and word-order rearrangement.The translation report aims to draw researcher?s attention to dashes translation,and to help translators render discourse with dashes accurately so as to improve the readability of translation works.