A Report On The Translation Of Translating Mount Fuji（Excerpts）

Based on the translation of the second chapter of Dennis Washburn’s English literary monograph Translating Mount Fuji: Modern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity,the report will give an analysis of the typical difficulties encountered during the translation practice.In the light of Peter Newmark’s text typology,the source text falls into a compound type with the main intention of communication,which requires communicative translation to be the directing principle.On the other hand,while dealing with the quotations from the novel and political documents related to the Meiji era,semantic translation would be emphasized.During the translation process,the typical difficulties are embodied in three main levels,namely the lexical,syntactic and textual level.At the lexical level,communicative translation is applied to render the referential meaning of some literary terms,proper names and common words.At the syntactic level,the idiomatic expression in Chinese should be taken into account while dealing with the nominal style and long complex sentences in conformity with the communicative intention.At the textual level,the simplification of some repetitive information embodies the principle of economy in communicative translation.Furthermore,the lexical cohesion in the novel and the style of the political documents contain the expressive components,thus translation of this part should follow the principle of semantic translation.This report is divided into five parts: introduction,the translation process,theoretical basis,case analysis and conclusion.Through the study of the translation practice under the direction of Newmark’s theory,the translator has a deeper comprehension of the translation of literary academic texts as well as the links between text typology and translation practice.From this practice,new findings and reflections are summarized at the end of the report,with an aim to provide some experience for the translation of the academic texts.