A Report On The Translation Of The Night Watchman(Excerpts)

This English-Chinese translation material is selected from Louise Erdrick’s American-Indian literature,The Night Watchman.It tells the story of her Native American ancestors who,in the early 1950 s,fought against a congressional bill that would “emancipate” Indians from their Indianness by ending all federal services provided for Indians and relocating them from their lands.There are certain difficulties in the English to Chinese translation pertaining to linguistic,cultural,and communicative factors.The report analyzes the problems in the translation process and brings forward corresponding solutions based on the“three-dimensional transformation”,namely linguistic,cultural,and communicative dimensions,proposed by Hu Gengshen in his Eco-translatology: Construction and Interpretation.As for the linguistic dimension,the translator employs the conversion of parts of speech and sentence restructuring to convert the linguistic form of the source text;as for the cultural dimension,the translator gives prominence to the transmission and interpretation of bilingual cultural connotations and applies methods like the shift of images and supplements of background knowledge;as for the communicative dimension,the translator allows target readers to comprehend the source language by filling in meaning blanks and transferring meaning in category cross-domain.This translation practice report not only justifies the guiding role of Eco-translatology for the practice,but also provides different perspectives for American-Indian translation.