| This translation report selects British biographer Michael Billington’s work The Life and Work of Harold Pinter(Chapter One)as translation material.The full text is about12,887 words in English.This work is the only biographical work authorized by Harold Pinter himself,the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.The first chapter of the work,mainly describing Harold Pinter’s life experience and emotional experience in childhood and adolescence,has the typical characteristics of a biographical text,in which the manner of speech is not only sincere but also quite objective.There are two difficulties in the translation: the first is the conveying of cultural background knowledge,book titles and person names in the text;the second is to keep both the literariness and authenticity of the original text,which means paying attention to the authenticity of information conveyance without losing the original author’s writing style and artistic style.This paper conducts a translation practice for chapter one of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter under the guidance of Newmark’s text type theory,and on this basis presents the practice report.It consists of five chapters.Chapter One expounds the significance and research background of The Life and Work of Harold Pinter and biographical literature.Chapter Two describes the analysis of the original text before translation,the difficulties and solutions in translation,and the proofreading work after translation.Chapter Three introduces the text type theory and discusses its significance and applicability to the translation of original texts and biographical texts.With translation cases,in terms of diction,sentence pattern,and style,Chapter Four analyzes the specific application of text type theory with which the translation can accurately reflect the background of the times and historical events and studies the ideographic and communicative effects achieved by different translation strategies.Chapter Five expounds the limitations of this study and draws the conclusion that biographical text is a kind of comprehensive text with the characteristics of informative,expressive,and vocative text,and its translation should be guided by strategies like communicative translation and semantic translation.To consider the literariness,authenticity and vocative nature of the original text,the translator may adjust words,sentence patterns,and manner of speech to enhance the correctness,readability,and aesthetic value of the translation.The objective of this report is to help to promote Pinter’s drama studies and offer a reference framework for exploring the translation of biographies,particularly those related to playwrights. |
