A Report On E-C Translation Of Asian American Literature:An Introduction To The Writings And Their Social Context(Chapters 1-2)

The source text of this translation practice is selected from Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context(Chapters 1-2)which is the first monograph to systematically criticize Asian American literary works.The author of the book Elaine H.Kim focuses on the experiences of Asian Americans from the late 19 th century to the 1980 s reflected in Asian American literature writings.Based on the relevant research of literary criticism,it is found that literary criticism is a highly specialized field,which explores the different styles,expression techniques,ideological contents and implied social background information,etc.of literary works.Containing literary texts as well as the theory of English language and literature,this kind of texts are logically rigorous and systematic.Due to the above features of literary criticism,it is difficult to translate such texts.In the process of translation,the translator finds that the source text contains a large number of culture-loaded words related to social,historical and cultural background information,proper nouns and long difficult sentences,all of which are the key and difficult points in this translation practice.The translator analyzes the lexical and syntactic features of the source text from three aspects,i.e.comprehension,expression and adaptation and further strives to understand the source text accurately and express properly by consulting dictionaries and literature,etc.In addition,suggestions and limitations are summarized as the reflection in the report,which is hoped to make some contributions to the translation practice of relevant literary criticism.By analyzing the key and difficult points in the translation practice,the translator summarizes that for the culture-loaded words containing background information in the source text,the method of free translation or paraphrase can be used to convey the relevant background knowledge.For the proper nouns involving the names of works or places,etc.,the official authoritative translation can be used first,and then the literal or free translation can be adopted to reflect their original characteristics.As for translating English sentences into Chinese,the translator should pay attention to the differences between Chinese and English expressions,and make the translation conform to the norms of target language by adjusting the order of words inside sentences,changing voice or parts of speech.Besides,the translator ought to consider the specific context in the source text and adopt the techniques such as adding conjunctions and subjects,etc.to make the translation readable and semantically accurate.