A Report On E-C Biography Translation Of The Life Of William Faulkner:the Past Is Never Dead(Excerpts) From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

This E-C translation report,excerpting the first chapter of the biography The Life of William Faulkner: The Past is Never Dead(Vol.1)as the translation material,aims to explore specific solutions for problems encountered at the course of biographical translation under the guidance of Verschueren’s adaptation theory.With rich citations and precise wording,the source text,formal and concise in style,objective and expressive in content,has great significance for understanding Faulkner and studying his works.Faulkner’s southern background and the literary flavor of biographical text also add some difficulties to the translation of the source text.Given these above characteristics,this report analyzes concrete examples from four perspectives of adaptation theory,namely,contextual correlates of adaptability(including communicative context and linguistic context),structural objects of adaptability(at lexical level and syntactic level),dynamics and salience by taking E-C language differences and the knowledge level of readers into consideration.In addition,this report explores how to use appropriate and specific translation skills to ensure accurate information-conveying of the source text and to improve the readability of the rendition,while inspiring readers’ interest and facilitating the dynamic exchange of the biographer and target readers.This report finds that adaptation theory has certain guiding significance to biographical translation.In the process of translation,such translation techniques as annotation,explanation,amplification,omission can be used to adapt to specific historical and linguistic context,while at the level of structural objects,division,conversion and restructuring can be widely adopted,so as to produce an understandable and smooth translated version.Moreover,this report discusses the dynamic generation of context and salience of consciousness with expectations of providing valuable references for translation of biographical texts in the future.