A Report On English-Chinese Translation Of The Circus Boys On The Mississippi(Excerpt)

The Circus Boys on the Mississippi,a novel for children,is written by Edgar B.P.Darlington.The stories expand with the adventures of two circus boys,Phil and Teddy and mainly talk about their friendship and struggle for dream.Since the original text is presented mainly in the form of dialogue with many oral expressions and the plots are coherent,the translator should begin translation after a comprehensive understanding of the context.In the translation of children's novels,the translator should also make sure that the translated version is loved by children.This requires the translator to understand children's reading habits to ensure that the translation adapts to children's lower cognitive ability and language level.Under the guidance of communicative translation proposed by Peter Newmark,the translator translates the first five chapters of the novel.Communicative translation focuses on the reading habits of the target readers,and emphasizes that the effect of the target text on the target readers should be similar to that of the source text on the original readers.To make the target text reappear the original style,the translator analyzes the problems in translation from the lexical,syntactic and stylistic levels,and uses some translation strategies.At the lexical level,to handle with polysemy,the translator consults multiple meanings of the word and closely combines the context to select the most appropriate expression.At the syntactic level,the translator adopts inversion,omission and amplification to make the target text conform to Chinese expression.At the stylistic level,the translator tries to make the target text reappear the style of the original text accurately and vividly to make the target text keep features of the original.Through this translation,the translator has gained valuable experience and a deeper understanding of the translation of children's literature.In the translation of Children's literature,the translator should not only keep the characteristics of the original text,but also explore the favorite language style of the target language readers,to make the translation well-accepted by target readers.