A Report On The Translation Of Homegoing (Chapter 10~13)

This is a report on the English-Chinese translation of Ghanaian-American Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing(Chapter10~13).The novel narrates a story of a Ghana family separated by slave trade with exquisite and plain words.The novel creates many vivid characters and clearly shows the impact of racial discrimination and slavery on individuals and nations.It is a literary work of social and historical significance.The novel was published in 2016 and won several awards once it was published,but it has not yet been translated into Chinese.Literary works are endowed with aesthetic value.Literary translation requires the translator to convey the artistic image of the original text with another language,so that the target readers can get the same enlightenment,emotional and aesthetic experience.Eugene Nida's functional equivalence theory can help a lot in this respect.Therefore,guided by functional equivalence,the report aims at exploring the methods and skills of literary translation by the analysis of the translation of characters' identity,characters' emotion and the image depictions in the text.Under the guidance of functional equivalence theory,the translator employs many translation strategies to solve the problems in the translation process.In the aspect of shaping character's identity,the translator adopts colloquial and non-standard Chinese expressions to reproduce the less-educated identity of the characters in the original text.In terms of the representing of characters' emotions,the author analyzes the emotions expressed in the original text,and accurately conveys them with the help of some translation skills,so as to achieve functional equivalence at emotion level.In the aspect of image depiction,the translator adopts the method of creative translation to bring the same aesthetic enjoyment to the target readers as much as possible and try to achieve the functional equivalence at image depiction level.This report discusses how to achieve equivalence in literary translation from three aspects,i.e.characters' identity,characters' emotion and image depictions.Besides that,the report deepens the functional equivalence theory at the operational level,so as to provide certain reference for novel translation.Meanwhile,the translator's translation ability and scientific research ability have also been improved in the process of report writing.However,due to translator's limited ability,there are still many places which are in need of improvement in the report,such as insufficient integration of theory and practice,and imperfect translation.Therefore,the translator still needs to keep studying to improve her translation competence.