A Report On The Translation Of A Reader’s Guide To The Contemporary English Novel (Excerpt) Under Translation Norms

A Reader’s Guide to the Contemporary English Novel(hereinafter as A Reader’s Guide)was written by Frederick Karl,which comments on English novels from the 1930 s to 1960 s.It remains an excellent guide to contemporary English novels.At present,translations of literary theory and literary work are common.However,translations of work like A Reader’s Guide,which combine literary theory with literary work,are comparatively few.Since its publication in China by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press,there has not been any translation except for a Chinese introduction to the book.Therefore,the translator decides to translate this book in order to provide a reference to English undergraduates and readership who is interested in contemporary English novels.This report focuses on the translation practice of the third and fourth chapters of A Reader’s Guide under the guidance of Chesterman’s translation norms.According to Chesterman’s expectancy norms,the translator first analyzes the informative text features of the original text and,considers the English proficiency of the target readers.It is determined that the target text should be simple and plain.From the linguistic aspects of expectancy norms such as grammar,collocations,and lexical choices,the translator figures out translation techniques such as division,omission,and antonymic translation.According to Chesterman’s professional norms,the translator pays much attention to the accountability of the translation,and mainly proofreads and consults experts in the field to make sure that mistakes and misunderstandings are removed to remain faithful to the original author.Besides,the target text is polished to meet the discourse conventions of the target text.The translator pays special attention to the use of inversion technique in the translation.When it comes to the communication norm,the translator goes out of her way to annotate the technical terms and some allusions to serve as a bridge communicating the original author and target readers.Last but not least,the translator tries to make a compromise between the source and target text to achieve relevance,which involves translation techniques like shift.Chesterman’s translation norms involve many aspects in the two dimensions of expectancy norms and professional norms.It is found that Chesterman’s translation norms guide throughout stages of pre-translation,while-translation,and post-translation,but different stage highlights different norms,and the translator focuses on appropriate norms by means of proper translation techniques based on a particular translation norm.