A Translation Report On Literary Reportage Silent Souls Weeping （Excerpts）

The Chapter Eight of the literary reportage Silent Souls Weeping:Depression-Sharing Stories,Finding Hope was chosen as the source text of this translation practice.The book was written by Jane Clayson Johnson,an American journalist and was published on December 30^th,2018 by Deseret Book.Chapter Eight mainly tells the stories of several patients with depression who committed suicide or attempted suicide.These factual stories are on the basis of Jane’s interviews with patients and their family members over the years.Moreover,some objective data,dialogues between the author and the interviewees are directly cited in the text.In light of the feature of the text,reception theory,derived from the work of Jauss,is applied to guide this translation practice.Horizon of expectations,one of the core elements in reception theory,indicates that readers’own past experiences,interests,and ideas will affect their reception of a work.This report first defines the target readers and their horizons of expectations,and then it analyzes and discusses the difficulties encountered in the translation process from two horizons,horizon of literary expectations and horizon of life experience.The consideration for language and cultural acceptability,together with affective and cognitive needs of target readers are accordingly adopted to resolve these difficulties.Finally,basing on the analysis of the whole process translation practice,the translator finds that reception theory is feasible in guiding literary reportage works on topic like depression.In addition,the translator hopes that the translated text will help Chinese readers to have a better understanding of depression.