A Report On Autobiography Translation Under Meme Theory

The concept “Meme” was put forward in the late 20 th century,which explained the law of cultural evolution based on Darwin's evolution theory.It refers to the ideas and thoughts that people imitate and spread to each other in the cultural field and pass on from generation to generation.Chesterman was the first one to introduce memes into the field of translation.He believed that only a part of memes in transmission survived to become strong memes.As a kind of biography,autobiography mainly narrates the author's own life story,like what he has heard and seen which contains the author's perception and wisdom.It plays an important role in our understanding of foreign related fields.From the perspective of memetics,accurate translation strategies should be adopted to improve the translation,which can be better understood by the target language readers.These strategies are conducive to the dissemination of these advanced theories and play an important role of guidance and reference for the translation of this kind.Based on the author's translation practice,this report attempts to explore the E-C translation of autobiography text from the perspective of memetics.As autobiography belongs to the category of practical text,its purpose is mainly to convey information to the public truly and comprehensively.In the process of translation,the translator should ensure the effective transmission of information,and at the same time,handling and understanding some specific expressions in the original text reasonably are also crucial,so as to ensure the logic and rationality of the whole text.This paper first conducts an in-depth study on the characteristics and writing background of the text,and then the research objectives and significance were settled.Secondly,specific translation processes such as preparation before translation,while translation and post translation are elaborated.Then,through cases,it discusses how to select appropriate meme translation strategies from the aspects of form,content and information,so as to achieve the expected translation effect and establish strong memes.It focuses on the accurate translation of words,technical terms as well as long and difficult sentences with special American cultural images.And in the process of translation,we always insist on improving the style and structure of the translation to make it conform to the reading habits of target language readers.This study eventually reached the following conclusions: First,learning from genotype and phenotype,the author substitutes flat statements with strong memes conforming to target readers' intrigue.The target text is enriched with a sense of modernization and literary style after adding these memes.Second,Imitation of the target language style can improve the readability of translation from three aspects.At the lexical level,when facing some vocabulary with cultural characteristics,it can be communicated with foreign students to determine the final translation.At the syntactic level,the translator can get enlightenment from educational books written in target language and try to process sentences according to the target language norms.At the textual level,translators should study the overall thoughts and expression habits of autobiographical texts to imitate the target language style and adapt to the needs of the target readers.This report is an experimental study of memes in the translation practice of autobiography.The author tries to put forward some suggestions in the hope of promoting the translation of similar texts in the future.