A Report On Translating Rhetorical Devices Of The Elephant In The Room

This practical report is based on the translation of the preface and the first chapter of The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in A Growing America.The author of this book is Tommy Tomlinson who was a sports journalist and now he's hosting a podcast called South Bound.In this book,Tommy looks back on his life from the perspective of an obese person.After his sister died of obesity,Tommy tries to make a positive change in himself and his life at the age of fifty.The first half of his life was troubled by obesity,and for the rest of his life,what changes would Tomlinson make? The writer Tomlinson uses a large number of rhetorical devices to describe his body size,internal feelings and some other scenes,to produce a literary effect with colorful language,vivid image and atmosphere.The rhetorical devices are the core topic that the translator focuses on.From the perspective of English rhetorical devices,the translator analyzes the definition of rhetorical devices,the classification,and the translation methods regarding to different rhetorical devices.The main rhetorical devices in the book are simile,metaphor,analogy,hyperbole,and parallelism.In the process of translation,the translator uses the methods of literal translation,addition,as well as omission to translate the original texts.The methods can be applied to the representative rhetorical devices as simile,metaphor,analogy and hyperbole,and parallelism.If there is a clearly identified subject or rhetorical object,literal translation can just be used.Otherwise,addition or omission is the choice regarding to specific context to realize better equivalent effect.The translator aims to improve her translation skills through this translation and take the mistakes and excellences as valuable experience to apply them all to future translation work.