A Report On The C-E Translation Of Biography From The Perspective Of Semantic Translation And Communicative Translation

The year 2020 witnessed the 125 th anniversary of Tianjin University.The book Eighteen Scholars is a biography about 18 outstanding scholars of the university who have laid the foundation for discipline development.Participating in the translation and proofreading of the book,the author writes the report based on the material to provide a reference about translation strategies,methods,and techniques of biographical texts.The book Eighteen Scholars gives a detailed introduction including their experience of study and work,scientific research achievements,and personality.The translation of such biographical texts should convey the information of the biography accurately,keep the natural and humorous language style,and realize the decoding between different cultural connotations to achieve the communicative effect of the text.Considering the features of the book and the demands for readers’ understanding towards the book and feeling the charm of the eighteen scholars,the author chooses Peter Newmark’s semantic translation and communicative translation as the guidance,striving to reflect the documentary and literary nature of biographies in truthful translation.Based on the difficulties the author encountered in translation,this report elaborates the specific application of semantic translation and communicative translation from the aspects of vocabulary,sentence,and discourse.To reproduce the author’s intention and approach the original style,the author,guided by semantic translation and under discipline norms,translates professional terms accurately based on their definitions,and retains the characteristic sentence structure to reflect its original style.To overcome readers’ obstacles in understanding due to the differences between English and Chinese,the author makes adjustments in part of speech under the guidance of communicative translation to make it conform to English grammar.The voices are changed to supplement explanations better.For the coherence of the text,appropriate adjustment of the order is made while cohesive words are added and direct speeches are paraphrased to enhance the readability of the translation and achieve the goal for good communication.To sum up,this report shows that semantic translation helps to reproduce the author’s thinking process of the work and retain the original style of biography;communicative translation helps readers to gain a better understanding and grasp the core content of the text.This thesis can provide a reference for the translation of biography to spread the influence of characters better.