A Report On The E-C Translation Of Augustus:The Biography Under The Guidance Of Text Typology

This is a translation report,and the source text of the practice is the first chapter of the book,Augustus:The Biography,by German history professor Jochen Bleicken.This chapter mainly describes the death of Julius Caesar.Previous researches have shown that the biographical literature is a literary form that combines history and literature,which requires translators to ensure the authenticity and objectivity of the historical information,and meanwhile to convey the information in aesthetic language in a translation of biographies,fully achieving the informative and expressive functions of the source text Therefore,Reiss’s text typology is introduced to guide this translation practice.According to Reiss,a biography belongs to the informative type with the elements of expressive type,i.e.a compound text.Focused on the informative features of the source text,this report analyzes the translation methods to achieve its informative function.Firstly,the report introduces the text typology in detail,and illustrates its guidance for this translation practice.Secondly,based on the linguistic features of the source text,the report analyzes the translation methods by specific cases on both lexical and syntactic levels,under the guidance of the text typology.Lastly,the following conclusions can be drawn through the analyses:on lexical level,a translator should,on the basis of carefully investigating and verifying historical knowledge,explicate the meanings implied by the historical words,and add notes when necessary,so as to create an adequate translation;and on syntactic level,a translator should play his subjective initiative,translate long sentences by following or reconstructing the original order,and use punctuation marks and connective words to explicate the logical relations between sentences,so as to create an accurate and coherent translation oriented to the target language.This report shows that the text typology can guide the translation of biographical literature.Through analyzing the translation methods to achieve the informative function of a biography on lexical and syntactical levels,the author has gained a better understanding of the theory.In addition,only the informative elements are discussed in this report,so further analysis can be made for MTI students to write practice reports by illustrating the expressive and operative elements of the biographical literature.