A Report On The Translation Of 1941: The Year Germany Lost The War (Chapters 1-2)

This is a report based on the translation of the first two chapters of Andrew Nagorski's 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War.The historical novel sets in around the year 1941 that is considered as a turning point of the Second World War by the original writer.It mainly describes important military events that happened in Britain,the United States,the Soviet Union and Germany,as well as the sapiential battles among the Machiavellians-Winston Churchill,Franklin Roosevelt,Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.The excerpts of the book without a Chinese version yet cover around 18,000 English words.Under the guidance of Peter Newmark's theory of semantic translation and communicative translation,the translator made a detailed case study on the translation from the lexical level,the syntactical level,the rhetorical level and the cultural level.On the lexical level,the translator focused on the translating of historical proper nouns following the theory of semantic translation while for other nouns containing historical information,the strategies of footnoting and word class shifting were applied.On the syntactical level,translation strategies as reversed translation,passive-active voice shifting and reconstruction,which were in according to the theory of communicative translation,worked more effectively.On the rhetorical level,the translator decided to deliver the implication of the images directly to sweep away the reading obstacles of the targeted readers.On the cultural level,the translator tended to meet the reading demands of the readers by changing the cultural images and readjusting the expressions according to the theory of communicative translation.By summarizing the problems and countermeasures during the English-Chinese translation of 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War,the translator hoped to offer some available suggestions to fellow translators who are or will be handling with similar issues in translating historical novels.