A Report On The Translation Of The Crucifix Killer(Excerpts)(Chapter 33-70)

Language serves as a tool for communication and one of its major roles is to transmit information.Hence one of the most important purposes of translation is to accurately deliver the original information,represent the speaker's intention and fulfill the communication purpose.As a bridge connecting semantics and pragmatics,the Information Structure theory,which provides translation with perspectives of information status,information value and focus,can be conducive to helping the target text reproduce the original communicative intention.Previous studies which employ thematic progression to guide translation and ensure the accuracy and fluency of the target text have already made great achievements.However,relatively few studies have probed into translation from the perspectives of information status,information value and information focus.In terms of translation process,Vinay and Darbelnet's detailed taxonomies of translation procedures contribute a lot to the translation practice.Unfortunately,they are seldom applied to related translation practice and researches at home.This paper is a report on the translation of The Crucifix Killer(Chapter 33 to Chapter 70),the first instalment of the "Robert Hunter" series by the British best-selling author Chris Carter.This report aims to study the translation of attributive clauses under the guidance of information structure and explore how to handle the implied message in dialogues and some culture-specific items by resorting to Vinay and Darbeknet's model.Based on the theories of "information focus","information value" and Vinay and Darbelnet's model,related translation strategies and techniques enlightened from this report include: in rendering attributive clauses,whether the relative clause is to be combined with the antecedents and embedded into the main clause or to be singled out and to form a new subject-predicate sequence depends on the information value each information unit is carrying and the location of the information focus.Moreover,explicitation proves to be of great help in avoiding confusion and misunderstanding in rendering the implied message in dialogues.In contrast,those culture-specific items can be generalized into more commonly used expressions in the target text.The implication of this study is that the target text is able to accurately convey the communicative intention and achieve an information structure pattern consistent with that of the target text by following the unmarked given-before-new default principle and other principles relating to marked information focus.In addition,the application of translation strategies and procedures like explicitation and generalization contributes to the accessibility and acceptability of the target text.